Canon's Secret Playgrounds

The Secret Playgrounds - Where do you go to make all your cares disappear? That was what we asked you when we launched our Canon EOS secret playgrounds photography competition – and now we have the results

Since June, we’ve been asking you for photographs of your secret playground for our Canon photography competition. By secret playground, we mean somewhere you consider your special place, somewhere you go to get away from it all, recharge your batteries, relax and think. Sending us your pictures would not only reveal your little piece of heaven but it would also give you a chance to win a fantastic prize: the best-selling 10-megapixel Canon EOS 400D digital SLR camera.

Your secret playground could be anything you wanted it to be. It could, for example, be your regular seat at your local football ground, a playground you share every other Saturday with thousands of hollering fans. Or maybe it’s more sedate than that, perhaps a quiet room at a museum where you can immerse yourself in history, or a deserted beach that you’ve convinced yourself only you know about.

It could even be that last secluded corner of the local park that has yet to be discovered by a noisy family. Maybe it’s your local pub or your favourite restaurant, the kind of place where they know your name and cook everything just the way you like it. Secret playgrounds come in all shapes and sizes and we wanted to know about them all.

After we asked for entries, we were inundated with photos of readers’ secret playgrounds and featured the 10 best entries in each of our three categories – Outdoor, Culture and Entertainment – in a gallery on The Independent’s website. Visitors to the website were then asked to vote for their favourite picture in each category to produce a winner for each, plus runners-up.

Here, we’re showcasing those winners and runners-up, so read on and enjoy these now not-so-secret playgrounds. See where our winners secret playgrounds are located on our map.

Canon's Secret Playgrounds
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Outdoors Winner:
Peter Carney, Wales.
This photo seems to re-imagine London’s National Gallery in Venice’s St Mark’s Square, not Trafalgar.		 Outdoors Commended:
Chris Mole, Danehill
“My son, Edward, practising his football at Freshwater East, Pembrokeshire.”		 Outdoors Commended:
Mark Lang, Somerset
“Wistman's Wood is a place of peace; it’s very old and wild. You have to dare yourself to go, just like the best playgrounds in life.”
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Canon's Secret Playgrounds
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Entertainment Winner:
Nathaniel Gonzales, Oxford
“Music relaxes my soul... blues to be exact. This street performer in Oxford’s city centre plays the blues... literally.”		 Entertainment Commended:
Henry Carless, Chichester
“In summer I like to practise a trick which I invented. I taught myself how to flair [juggling bottles for bartending] and then set them on fire! I took this long exposure to catch the hypnotising trails of the flames in my garden on a warm summer’s night.”		 Entertainment Commended:
Karl Williamson, Edinburgh
“My secret playground is watching the street performers on the Royal Mile during the Edinburgh Festival.”
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Canon's Secret Playgrounds
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Culture Winner:
Barry Reid, London
As photographed by Barry Reid, one of Antony Gormley’s bronze statues, 31 of which are placed around London’s South Bank, looks more like a mysterious sentinel watching over an alternative, futuristic Earth.		 Culture Commended:
Tom Coulson, Wigan
“My 'Bright Lights' photograph illustrates the hypnotic pulses of the city that absorb me into its energy.”		 Culture Commended:
Paul Prince, London
“I captured the London Eye so that it looks more like a fast-moving fairground ferris wheel than the slow-moving tourist attraction that it is.”
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