It was a dark and gloomy day – actually it was a beautiful day full of buzzing people when Joni Noble snapped her award winning, black and white photograph.

Noble, an art professor, was abroad in London, taking pictures of the Hampton Court Palace formal gardens when she noticed a couple of trees that looked “so lonely and stark.”

She thought they were beautiful and the sky was perfect. Noble got down at the bottom of a hill and took the picture. Later when she looked back at the picture, it seemed so unusual.

“It was completely different than what was actually going on that day in the gardens,” said Noble. “There were people all over the place. But I just happened to find that right time to shoot that made it look lonely and isolated.”

That’s why Noble decided to enter that photograph in the annual Big Easel Show.

The Big Easel is a national competition in Lafayette. All artists who participated showed their work in May.

Noble brought 50 pieces of her work down there to display.

Jeffery McCullough, Big Easel juror and organizer from Atlanta, has a gallery in Lafayette and hosts a Big Easel preview show at his gallery.

He asked all accepted artists to send five images to him and he would pick one to go in the preview. He chose one of Noble’s photographs.

Then at the awards ceremony two weeks ago, Noble’s photo “Hampton Court Palace Gardens” won best photograph.

She was so excited. McCullough said he had more images to go through than any other year and he only picks the very best.

There were 50 returning artists and 17 new artists. Noble was among the new artists.

“I like black and white photography. When I paint, I paint very colorfully. But when I shoot photographs I like black and white,” Noble said.

She loved the composition of her winning photo. The gallery in Lafayette will run through April.

Noble said she takes around 2,000 photographs abroad everywhere.

“I wanted to pick a photograph from the group that I take when I’m in Europe. It’s something that not a lot of people around here get to see,” Noble said.

Noble has a Master of Fine Arts in Photography.

She would spend every day of her life for five or six years in the dark room when she was an undergraduate.

Joni Noble is the center, with the black hat on.