Singapore, June 8- Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) bagged two awards at the SOPA 2013 Awards for Editorial Excellence held Thursday night at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre in Hong Kong.
The SOPA Awards for Editorial Excellence were established by The Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) in 1999, as a tribute to editorial excellence in both traditional and new media. At this year’s SOPA awards, SPH won the Excellence in News Photography and
Excellence in Feature Photography.
The winning photograph for the story LionsXII survive Sarawak ‘hell’ was taken by Kelvin Chng, who was a photojournalist with The New Paper for 11 years, and is now with the English and Malay Newspapers Division’s Editorial Support Service Unit as a Systems Support Specialist in SPH, according to a statement
released by SPH.
Dominic Nathan, Editor of The New Paper, said: “Sports photography is a specialised field in itself, but this time Kelvin caught the action off the field as well, after the final whistle.The LionsXll were pelted with water bottles after a bruising away win against Sarawak.
“The award is also great recognition of The New Paper’s effort in giving our readers the best sports coverage in Singapore. No one covered the return of the Malaysian Super League last year like we did and going forward, you can count on more action shots, on and off the field,” he said.
The Straits Times photojournalist Desmond Lim won an Honourable Mention in the category of Excellence in Feature Photography. Lim won for his series of photographs in Hiding Place: Singapore’s first halfway house. He lived in the halfway house for 10 days weeks to document the everyday lives of its residents.
Lim was also part of the team that won an Honourable Mention in the same category at last year’s SOPA awards. Stephanie Yeow, Picture Editor at The Straits Times, said: “We are extremely proud of Desmond (Lim), to say the least.
“He is one of our most talented photographers. Even though he was a runner-up tonight, he’s number one in my book,” Yeow added.The SOPA Awards were divided into three groups, A, B and C.
Under SOPA’s classification, SPH contended for awards in Group B, categorised as English-language newspapers that circulate primarily in one or two countries, English-language magazines with circulation under 50,000 and English-language websites with five million monthly uniques or below.
– BERNAMA
