Pat's pictures put her in the frame for award

A FORMER teacher has been shortlisted among the best in the world for her black and white photographs.

Pat Maycroft, who lives in South Side, near Butterknowle, was nominated at the Black and White Spider Awards for her silhouette snap of Saltburn Pier and her atmospheric door knocker titled “Don’t Bite the Hand”.

The former Darlington College teacher used an underwater camera to take the impromptu pictures on a day out at the coast.

Ms Maycroft said: “The tide was right out and I’d never seen it like that before. The sun was setting and I was one of those grabbing shots.

“I took three or four and that was the best one.”

Her nomination was unveiled during a live online stream viewed by 11,000 photography fans worldwide.

Industry experts from New York and London judged her Saltburn shot best among 92 nominations in the silhouette category with “Don’t Bite” coming out on top from 105 nominees.

Ms Maycroft put her work forward in February this year but only heard back from the competition earlier this month.

She added: “I had nearly forgotten about it.

“I was getting a lot of junk mail through but I thought I better take a look – I nearly missed it.”

The 72-year-old has lived in South Side for the past 22 years but her passion for photograph was kindled long before then.

Her interest began aged nine when she got hold of her dad’s Box Brownie to take pictures of her dog.

She still has the camera.

In the years since, she has gone on to host photography exhibitions at the former DLI Museum and as far away as Solihull.

Ms Maycroft was also one of the founders of the Vane Women – a creative writing group which formed on Vane Terrace, in Darlington, to support female authors.

She has had many of her pictures published at the forefront of works and anthologies through the group – the most well known being Northern Grit, which was so popular is required a second print run in 2004.

Now the grandmother-of-four is taking strides in the separate worlds of poetry and swimming through a series of digital “film-poems” published online.

She explained: “I swim and last year we went to the Greek Islands to take pictures of the fish and then wrote a poem – I got quite a bit of feedback from the open water swimmers.

“Poetry, swimming and photography are the three things I am keen on – I am quite excited about the film-poems because each one has been different.”

Alongside her film and photography, one of her poems Cockfield Fell in Winter has also been showcased in an anthology of North Eastern works this year.

But when it came to her first and foremost passion she had a couple of tips to pass on to budding snappers.

“Just go for it – carry a camera around with you like I did at Saltburn,” she added.

“F8 and be there was the saying passed on to me.”