AN accountant who works part-time as a photographer beat off competition from almost 42,000 entries to be a runner-up on the BBC Countryfile Calendar 2020, where a small version of her photograph is included.

Sally Holmes, who lives just outside Ralegh’s Cross, was thrilled when her dandelion seed-head with dew was chosen as one of 12 photographs for each calendar month that will be used in a small size alongside the larger, winning pictures.

“It’s the first time I have entered something like this,” said Sally, who now works as a semi-professional photographer.

“They did a programme about the calendar, and I saw mine was commented on, so I was really chuffed.

“I was bitterly disappointed initially that I was not in the final 12 – but then I got an email about them using the runner-up pictures, and I wasn’t aware they did that. I was thrilled,” she said.

Sally, who is a self-employed chartered management accountant, has been interested in photography ever since her father encouraged her, from the age of 16.

She always had a camera or phone camera, and used to take photographs and make big collages at work functions.

For the last 18 months her hobby has become something more serious after her family gave her a “really good” camera for an important birthday.

Now she covers everything from weddings to Minehead ladies rugby, dog shows to portraits, and some of her work has appeared in top photography magazines.

Sally took her winning photograph while walking in a field in February. She saw the heavy dew on the dandelion head, and photographed it with a macro lens, for taking close-up pictures of small subjects, that she had been given as a Christmas present.

“I got carried away with it – it’s incredible what you don’t notice,” she said.

The calendar is sold in aid of the BBC Children in Need appeal.