Get Ready for 4th Annual Photo Contest

It’s that time of year again, to celebrate the beauty of our islands - through your eyes.

Our 4^th annual Thousand Islands Life Photo Contest is officially announced.

We began this initiative in 2012 to provide a showcase for your talents and passion for the place, as well as to share the views with a large, appreciative audience.  At the same time, these photographs allow us to see aspects of the River that they may not be intimately familiar with.

As always, there are three awards, gold, silver and bronze certificates, created by graphic artist extraordinaire, Dave O'Malley, ready for framing, for the best overall submissions.

The Gold Medal winner will receive a copy of Susan Weston Smith's, (yes, our editor, Susie!) reprinted book, “The First Summer People, Thousand Islands 1650-1910.”  This book is a must for all islanders and the "go to" source for historical information on the region and more impressively, virtually every island to be found here.

We’ll also showcase our winning images and the best of the rest, as "honorable mentions” in the December 2015 issue.

All submissions should be sent straight to Susie, so she can forward them to me blind, to select from.

We’d like to see your three best images - old or new.  You may also resubmit  a photograph that was published to illustrate a past “TI Life” article, has been published on our Facebook page, or appeared on another group’s facebook page. (i.e. Thousand Islands River Views.)

A helpful hint:  Remember out of focus images, unintended crooked horizons and bad exposures, should be corrected with the software that came with your camera. Cropping-out extraneous detail, or re-framing an image can also increase impact. Despite trying really hard to get it right while shooting, most of my images are later improved through careful editing. If you don’t already do this, you’ll be surprised how often an ordinary image can be improved and sometimes transformed in this way.

By Ian Coristine

Ian Coristine has been active in aerial photography for over 25 years and has written extensively for U.S. and Canadian aviation publications. The demands of air-to-air photography proved ideal training for an unexpected career of delighting residents of the Thousand Islands with seven books that showcase the region's beauty.

His Thousand Islands photographs have been featured internationally. DxO Labs of Paris, France, award winning publishers of revolutionary high-end camera and lens correction software, selected Coristine as one of their 12 founding "Image Masters" from professional photographers around the world.

Ian Coristine's seventh book, published this year, “Ian Coristine’s 1000 Islands,” is the culmination of his twenty years of work.  He says, “These are my top picks, from the over 50,000 images I’ve captured since the River became my life’s work. To not share these is unthinkable.”

Since Paul Malo created “Thousand Islands Life Magazine,” Ian has generously shared his photography in each issue as well as providing our special “page headers.”