An image of youthful confidence and determination that was taken using Victorian photographic technology has been named winner of one the UK's leading portraiture prizes.
Paul Floyd Blake's portrait of a 13-year-old swimmer who hopes to compete in the 2012 Paralympic games won the Taylor Wessing photographic portrait prize at a ceremony held at London's National Portrait Gallery.
The subject, Rosie Bancroft, had her foot removed when she was a baby. The portrait, part of the On Track for 2012 series, was taken in a swimming pool changing room in her home city of Oxford. Blake described her as a "fantastic subject, very natural and relaxed in front of the camera".
"Rosie was competing throughout the day and there was only a short window when I could take the picture," he said. "She had just swum a personal best in her event and I think that's why she has such a confident, self-assured look in the portrait."
Blake eschews digital technology: he uses a 5x4 Wista field camera, a modern version of the 19th-century plate cameras. "To get the same quality with a digital camera, you're looking at £20,000," said Blake. "It's got bellows and lots of different movements which I tend not to muck around with. I'm not [German photographer] Andreas Gursky."
An exhibition of the best entries goes on display at the National Portrait Gallery from Thursday until 14 February before the best 60 portraits – whittled down from 6,300 submissions – are shown at the Shipley art gallery, Gateshead, and then Walsall's New Art gallery.
Blake is photographing 12 young athletes with the potential to compete in the Olympics. "The series is probably less about sport than it is about young people growing up and the transition from childhood into adulthood," he said. "These teenagers exist in this ultra-professional world that can often be very isolating. It is about them growing up and how the experiences they have now shape them for the future."
West Yorkshire-based Blake, who wins £12,000, did not begin his photographic career until seven years ago when he was 40, but his work has now been exhibited in six solo exhibitions.
Sandy Nairne, the gallery's director, who chaired the judging panel, praised Blake's portrait as "a brilliant study of youthful determination".
