Dunmore East RNLI crew member receives Photographer of the Year award

Neville Murphy from Dunmore East RNLI in county Waterford has this week been presented with his award for winning the annual RNLI Photographer of the Year competition.

Kelly Allen, RNLI Camera Operations Manager visited the Dunmore East lifeboat station on Monday night (11 February) and presented Neville with a new Pentax Optio WG-2 camera and a framed and captioned print of his winning photo. He also received a certificate signed by RNLI Chief Executive Paul Boissier.

Neville fought off stiff competition from hundreds of entries late last year to be short-listed to the final 12 before being selected the winner in a public vote on the charity’s Facebook page.

The photo aptly titled ‘The Calm’ shows the lifeboat crew kit hanging up in the changing room in the Dunmore East station.

Neville said when he captured the winning image his thoughts were that it reflected a sense of calm between the often challenging and dangerous callouts which bring RNLI volunteers to sea: ‘Where I took the picture in the crew changing room, there was peace and quiet and it got me thinking how all that can change within seconds when the pager goes off’.

Kelly said the photograph depicted the calm before the next shout at a lifeboat station: ‘It's a reminder that each crew like the one here in Dunmore East is made up of all sorts of people from all sorts of walks of life, who will rush to the station, pull on those jackets and answer the call. The photograph is wonderfully captured, as are the surroundings – this is the calm but a calm with a sense of waiting for the next call out’.

Neville, a native of Skibbereen in county Cork has been on the all-weather lifeboat crew for 10 years since his job as a winch man with the Irish Coast Guard - Rescue 117, brought him to Waterford.

‘I always wanted to be on the RNLI crew,’ Neville said, ‘but didn’t live within a reasonable distance to volunteer until I moved to Waterford. As soon as I moved I took the opportunity to join the crew here at Dunmore East and I haven’t looked back since’.

The Photographer of the Year competition, which the RNLI runs each year, is open to the charity’s volunteer lifeboat crews and lifeguards – celebrating their lifesaving work, captured through their own photographs.

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