Guardian Australia\u2019s picture editor, Carly Earl, has won the $10,000 top award in the 2025 Australian Life photography competition, with the judges praising Earl for capturing \u201ca beautiful insight into reality of life in rural Australia\u201d in her portrait of young drovers in central Queensland.<\/p>\n
Earl, a Sydney-based photographer and picture editor for Guardian Australia<\/a>, took the portrait of 19-year-old Riley Swanson while covering a droving team working south of Roma in central Queensland.<\/p>\n \u201cYoung drovers in rural Australia spend months on horseback moving cattle, far from modern distractions,\u201d Earl wrote in her artist statement for the winning work. \u201cSleeping in trailers and riding 12-hour days, they face isolation, injury risks and financial loss. Many quit early, but a few, like Riley Swanson, endure the harsh, romanticised life on remote, decades-old stock routes.\u201d<\/p>\n Australian Life, an annual competition and exhibition run by the City of Sydney council as part of their public art program Art and About, showcases works from amateur and professional photographers.<\/p>\n Earl\u2019s photograph, one of 30 finalist images<\/a> across different age categories, was awarded the top prize by judges Hank Paul, who won last year; photographer Milly Hooper; and documentary and travel photographer Matt Horspool.<\/p>\n Hooper said Earl\u2019s portrait offered \u201ca beautiful insight into reality of life in rural Australia \u2013 an ordinary story that most city folk wouldn\u2019t be aware of\u201d, while Horspool praised her \u201cuse of shadows, colour and composition\u201d.<\/p>\n Earl\u2019s win was announced at a ceremony at Sydney\u2019s Customs House on Thursday night, along with the winners of Australian Life\u2019s youth category, open to photographers aged 13 to 17, and the Little Sydney Lives competition, open to photographers aged five to 12.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Sign up to Saved for Later<\/p>\n Catch up on the fun stuff with Guardian Australia’s culture and lifestyle rundown of pop culture, trends and tips<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Callum Poling won Australian Life\u2019s teen category for his black and white photograph February Boat Carnival, showing the \u201corganised chaos\u201d of a surf boat carnival, while Chloe Wiseman won the Little Sydney Lives category with a black and white portrait of her mum titled Home-made Mummy Double-Exposure, using a double-exposure technique.<\/p>\n Zoe Morris was named runner up with her ebullient photograph Sibling Love, capturing \u201cthe close bond between a brother and a sister\u201d.<\/p>\n The finalists from Australian Life will be showcased in an outdoor exhibition at Circular Quay, while the finalists for the Little Sydney Lives competition will be exhibited at Customs House nearby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guardian Australia\u2019s picture editor, Carly Earl, has won the $10,000 top award in the 2025 Australian Life photography…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":306388,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3939],"tags":[4021,4020,4022,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-306387","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-design","11":"tag-entertainment","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114947461195886846","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=306387"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/306387\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/306388"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=306387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=306387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=306387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}