Sitting just like a boss

Miss Lum Xin Yi was visiting her grandparents' home two Sundays ago when she saw her 90-year-old grandfather sitting at his favourite spot.

Noticing how the sunlight was falling on him, Miss Lum, 19, snapped this photo of him.

"It was coincidental and I liked how my grandpa looked pretty cool," said the first-year student at Nanyang Technological University's School of Art, Design and Media.

"I think the photo shows him in his glory. He likes to sit there like a boss."

She submitted the photo after reading about last week's Big Picture contest theme, Silver Singapore, which calls for photos of how the city's landscape, communities and people were ageing.

And it clinched the weekly $500 prize for the year-long competition organised by The New Paper and the Ministry of Culture, Community and Youth to encourage Singaporeans to document everyday life in the city.

While all three judges last week picked different winners, Miss Lum's photo was the highest ranked among their top three picks.

WINNER

The photo was a winner for judge Timothy Sim because it captured an atmosphere that successfully conveyed her story.

"Good choice of framing, light falls just right, and the colours isolate the man from his dull surroundings very well," he said.

Also impressed by the photo was judge Alphonsus Chern, who picked it as his runner-up and praised how it depicted the typical home for Singapore's silver generation.

For his winner, Mr Chern picked Mr Hang Loo Ming's picture of an elderly man helping a senior cross the road in the rain.

"This photograph of one senior helping another cross the rain-slicked road depicts, in a single moment, a quintessential heartland scene in Singapore," he said.

Last week's third judge Nguan had a different winner as well.

He selected Mr Christian Lam's black-and-white photo of an elderly couple on a bus as it was an unconventional response to the contest theme.

"The photograph is intriguing with the poses of the couple replicating the effect of a mirror image, and the pole grip between them even resembling a mirror's frame," he said.

To see the photos by Mr Hang, Mr Lam and last week's other finalists, visit The Big Picture's website at www2.tnp.sg/TheBigPicture.