Local photographer wins magazine contest

adam merrow winner picBy Jaime Thomas

Out of thousands of entries and hundreds of finalists, local college student Adam Merrow recently won second place in a photography contest.

Merrow’s shot, titled Blasting, of a friend riding a dirt bike on a track in Bennington, Vt., placed in Digital Photography Magazine’s 6th Annual Your Best Shot Contest — to his surprise.

“My photo teacher told me to enter the contest. So I entered it and I totally forgot about it. I got a text message from a friend a few months later that said they saw my photo in the magazine and I came in second,” Merrow said.

Merrow, who grew up in Granville and recently moved back to the area after spending time in Florida, has been interested in photography for a number of years. After picking up an old Kodak camera and playing around with it for a while when he was 15, he realized he had a knack for the art.

At Granville High School, Merrow started off in a film photography class, which he hated, and then moved on to digital. He found his teachers to be quite helpful.

“Mr. Frandino and Mrs. Weber did stuff on the side. Mr. Frandino definitely helped me. I’d stay after school, and he’d teach me about lighting and exposure; he was like a mentor,” Merrow said.

After graduating high school, he moved to Florida where he began having his photography published at EastMX.com and began networking in the motocross industry. He has developed a strong liking and skill for this work and said he’s received a positive response for these photos.

Though his favorite subject to shoot is motocross, he has also pursued landscape and commercial photography.

Currently, Merrow is enrolled at Adirondack Community College for communications and marketing. He has also taken several photography courses at the school but is focused on his education.

Outside of academics, Merrow continues to shoot extreme sports and sell his work that way.  He said it’s taken a while for anyone to come forward and recognize him, but he’s glad for the feedback and for winning the contest.

“It’s nice to get recognized. It feels really good to see it come together — it makes me want to take it off the back burner and do it like I used to,” he said.

He thinks his passion for photography stems from the way he views things.

“Somebody could look at something and go by, but I look at it and see the picture in my head. I can be really creative and speak with my photos,” Merrow said.

To see Merrow’s work visit adammerrowphotography.com.