SHHHH! It’s a secret, but the Clarence Valley IN FOCUS photo competition: Faces of Community winners have been chosen. The Clarence Valley Council’s annual photography competition once again received many outstanding photographs and it was a challenging task for the judges Adam Hourigan, Debrah Novak and Simon Hughes to select prize winners. IN FOCUS and plunge arts and cultural festival coordinator Lou Gumb said organisers took a slightly different tack with this year’s photo competition by asking entrants to turn the camera on residents and capturing the very people that make up the Clarence Valley. “It made for a nice change, and it was great to see so many great photos,” she said. “The judges were incredibly impressed at the quality of imagery that was entered and there was a lot of friendly debate over who were the winning photographers.” There were four category winners in this year’s competition; DSLR, point and shoot, mobile and the plunge cover. The plunge cover winner will be announced on February 13 with the release of the plunge arts and culture festival event guide. The winners of the DSLR, point and shoot and mobile categories will be announced at the Grafton Regional Gallery opening on March 18. Each winner will receive $500 and their entry be displayed at the gallery for the duration of the plunge festival. Ms Gumb said that in another first for the competition, all entries into this year’s competition along with previous year’s winners would be on display at the pop-up hub in the Yamba industrial estate from March 26. “But more news on this later,” she said.