Congratulations to Patton’d Studios’ Creative Director Molly Patton who took out the 2016 SUPL PhotoWalk People’s Award;
a biennial competition in which randomly selected applicants are given the opportunity to walk through and photograph research centres around the globe and enter them in a worldwide competition.
Molly’s image was taken 1km underground in the mining town of Stawell, Victoria, Australia. Here the Stawell Underground Physics Lab (SUPL) will be located and once complete, it will contribute to a global experiment to detect dark matter.

“It was incredible just to go down there and do the shoot, but to be selected for the global competition and then to win People’s Choice – that’s pretty special and is something I’ll remember for a very long time.”
– Molly Patton, Founder and Creative in Chief
The image is representative of how there is beauty in every field of science (even when they are still just holes in the ground). Through her use of long exposure to generate the beam of light on the right hand side of the photograph, Molly reflects on the notion of particle detection and revealing hidden worlds.