Sydney-based photographer Adam Taylor has taken out the Advertising Photographer of the Year at the International Photography Awards (IPA), for a series of campaign shots for the Surfrider Foundation.

This latest award scoop adds to Taylor’s growing collection of industry accolades including gold, silver and bronze at Cannes and AWARD along with a four year consecutive feature inside the pages of Luerzer’s Archive Best Advertising Photographers Worldwide.

The IPA awarded campaign, Our oceans aren't the only ones in danger, via Leo Burnett Sydney was featured in the last print issue of Australian Creative and has appeared in surf titles including Australian Longboarder, Surfing World Magazine, Surfer’s Path Surfing Life, Curl, New Zealand Surfer along with Surfrider in both the US and UK.

The campaign highlights the devastating effects pollution has on ocean wildlife and asks society to re-think the careless disposing of rubbish into our seas.

With a brief to execute a confronting creative concept that sees human subjects literally trading places with deceased or trapped ocean wildlife Taylor said the initial research involved going through many images of fatally injured ocean wildlife to come to grips with the situation
 
"By replacing creatures such as turtles or seals with actual people, we had a bold idea to lead with and one that effectively hit home the key campaign message that we all suffer from the harmful consequences of polluted oceans and waterways," he said.
 
The campaign consists of a series of three shots, including a mother and daughter trapped in a deadly foreshore oil spill, a garbage clad skeleton wasting away on sand dunes and a man trapped in bottle-neck packaging dangling on the surface of the sea bed.

Leo Burnett art director Brendan Donnelly, who worked on the campaign alongside Taylor, said the images successfully achieved the required haunting realism and eerie rawness that was needed to create cut through to reach the campaign’s target demographic.

"Not particularly interested in perfectly curated advertising shots, we instead led with a documentary style inspired approach with photographs that were neither overly composed or heavily retouched to achieve a raw and impacting series of images," he said.

Taylor is now listed as a finalist for the International Photographer of the Year Award at the 2011 international Lucie Awards, to be announced at a gala award ceremony at Lincoln Centre New York on October 24, 2011.