Dubai: Gulf News has received several awards for its editorial coverage of the Dubai Shopping Festival (DSF).
Journalists and photographers from both the UAE's English and Arabic print media were honoured at a ceremony in Dubai yesterday morning.
The awards were presented by Shaikh Hasher Maktoum, Dubai Director of Information.
Gulf News won a total of four awards including Best Editorial and Design for an English newspaper.
Aya Lowe, a reporter on Gulf News' Business desk, won second prize in the Prolific Writer category. Staff photographers Arshad Ali and Hadrian Hernandez won the first and second prizes respectively in the Celebrations category of the Photography Awards.
Grateful
Paul Stober, deputy managing editor (business) at Gulf News, said: "Gulf News is very grateful for this acknowledgement of our coverage of the Dubai Shopping Festival and we would like to thank the Dubai Events and Promotions Establishment for these awards.
"Our readers are often part of the festival and our journalists, photographers and the rest of the Gulf News team cover it as best they can as a service to them.
"This year we tried to ensure that our coverage was informative and entertaining in both print and online and we will try to do even better during the next festival."
The awards ceremony, which was held at The Address Hotel in Dubai's Downtown Burj Khalifa district, was attended by Ibrahim Saleh, Festivals Coordinator General and Deputy CEO of DEPE and Yousif Mubarak, Executive Director of Operations Support at DEPE.
Miguel Angel Gomez, Design Director at Al Nisr Group, said: "It is good to get recognition for your job. In this case it was unexpected. We were just doing our best as usual and trying to make the subject easy to read as well as visually appealing.
"For us, DSF with all the events and performances, is an excellent source of great images that help us to come with a display stories on a nice way. This is obviously a team effort where everyone gave it their best, Stories, images and layout all combined with the same purpose."
The Prolific Writer award recognises the journalist who has written most extensively about the festival.
Gulf News' Aya Lowe, who was named runner-up in the category, said: "It has been an enjoyable experience covering the DSF events from a retail and tourism point of view."
The DSF Journalism and Photography Awards are held at the end of each year's event to honour the efforts of reporters and photographers in documenting the festival to a local and international audience. The awards are governed by a jury committee comprising of prominent media professionals based in the UAE.
Celebrations
Gulf News won two Photography Awards — both in the Celebrations category — at this year's event.
Arshad Ali, who has won several DSF photography awards over the last few years, said he was very pleased to win first prize at this year's ceremony. "There are a lot of events taking place during DSF so there are plenty of opportunities to take nice pictures," he said.
Hernandez, who won second prize, added: "DSF highlights the important role of press photographers and rewards entrepreneurial work. This year, I concentrated my efforts on the celebrations taking place around Al Seef Street.
"I am going to send all my winnings to my wife in the Philippines to help support her business venture. Furthermore, it is our 11th wedding anniversary next month so this will be a nice surprise."
DSF attracts thousands of people to Dubai each year.
Have you taken advantage of the DSF sales? Do you wait for this festival to do all your shopping? What bargains have you found?
