North Tawton vet Bryony Herrod-Taylor was one of 40 photographers whose photographs were chosen to be printed and exhibited as part of an online photo competition.

Bryony’s photo was one of 40 out of thousands of submissions that were printed out for an exhibition at the Bridgeport Art Center in Chicago, USA at the beginning of November as part of the Very Best of Black and White competition organised by GuruShots, an online photography challenge.

‘So GuruShots do it for each competition; they have up to 40 photos that they print up while the rest are digitally displayed. It’s always the top ten that they print and then they choose other ones that they actually want printed up which is quite nice – it’s a way of getting to the top,’ said Bryony, who was one of 915 GuruShots members who exhibited at the event.

However that was a very small minority of the 60,000 photographs originally submitted from across 38 countries. GuruShots calculated that 81 million people voted for their favourite photograph at the event.

Bryony’s focus is wildlife and flower photography, an interest which grew from her love of animals as she played with her pets, particularly the dogs.

She said: ‘I think it was probably more playing with pets and dogs and trying to take photos of them. My brother in law is in to photography as well and it just kind of developed from there. You just try and improve yourself, learn a bit more and just pick up things from different places, different people and develop ways to improve how to take photos and also how to edit them as well, though I’m not really into that.

‘I prefer my Canon DSLR, I’ve not really got the hang of the phone and doing wildlife photography on it. It’s a bit harder to do with iPhones and things like that. I have got the long prime lenses, telephoto lenses and things like that for my camera which do help.’

Bryony, who often works in Okehampton and Hatherleigh, has already been exhibited in London, Edinburgh, Minneapolis (US), Hanoi (Vietnam), Manila (Philippines) and Athens (Greece), but this is the first time she has been exhibited in Chicago and, in celebration, decided to take a trip to the Windy City.

‘It was quite windy, even though the weather was good when we went,’ she added. ‘We were able to walk around and see everything.’

GuruShots is an open platform for anyone who has an interest in photography.

Members are able to enter real time challenges and receive votes on any submitted photographs. All new members start off as ‘newbies’ but work their way up the rankings as they receive more votes. The most experienced photographers are known as ‘gurus’.

The next GuruShots exhibition is due to take place in Hanoi from November 24-29. For more information, visit www.gurushots.com.