CONTRASTING images of industrial life at home and abroad scooped top prizes for two Newport photography students.

Danielle Press and Jon Rowley, students at the University of Wales, Newport, were each awarded £250 by the Welsh Livery Guild for the work which focuses on the decline of Welsh mining and growth in Chinese shipping.

Danielle spent a month taking photos of the bustling Chenxi shipyard at the lower reach of the busy Yangtze River in the province of Jiangsu, a densely populated region of China.

She said: "The perceived affluence on the eastern belt of China tempts many workers to travel from agricultural backgrounds to what they believe will be a better life.

"In reality they can be paid as little as £1.30 a day and receive only the most basic healthcare and low-quality accommodation.

"The health and safety standards within the shipyard are consistently well below those that are legally enforced outside its gates.

"An engineer offered one piece of advice: 'Please be careful, people are disposable and there is little respect for life on these shipyards.'

"I have attempted to recognise this within my work and present images of the people as proud individuals struggling to work, live and survive in a hard and intense yet strangely beautiful industrial environment."

Jon's series of landscapes commemorates the 20th anniversary of the miners' strike, and shows sites of picket lines in Yorkshire and South Wales.

"The land holds secrets and tells stories of what man has done to survive," said Jon. "The landscape in South Wales is a strange one, beautiful, yet not entirely natural.

"These are what you could call 'social landscapes' - modern-day battlefields where groups of people stood up for what they believed in."