SunMedia photographer Bruce Barnard has made it two-in-a-row picking up the Best Feature Lifestyle Photographer Award at this year's community newspaper awards.

Bruce once again snapped the award at the New Zealand Community Newspaper Awards after winning the same honour in Queenstown last year.

SunMedia photographer Bruce Barnard award winning shot.

'I'm delighted to win for the second year running,” says Bruce. 'Very pleased, of course. It's a real endorsement to the effort.”

Judges said Bruce had the best use of a wide-angle lens seen in the competition, with great use of lighting and a fantastic variety of images that are vibrant and colourful with lots of action and feeling.

'I love the perspective that wide angle gives, it just exaggerates distance and angles and makes for dramatic and interesting pictures,” says Bruce.

'We see everything from eye-level and the wide-angle lens changes that perspective.”

Bruce picked up the camera at age 19 and has been working for SunMedia since September 2009, taking inspiration from Tauranga photographers Bob Tulloch and David Vernon.

'I was a motorcyclist, so I was keen to photograph motorcycle racing. I did that and that was it; I was hooked. It was something I took interest in and I focused on it.”

He's being funny, an attribute his colleagues enjoy in the fast-paced environment of a newsroom filled with reporters eyeing deadlines.

'I love the type of work here because you turn up one day and don't know what's on the plate for that day.

'I meet lots of interesting people doing interesting things. I find myself in places which you don't often find yourself in. For instance, flying over Tauranga in a biplane or rescue helicopter, or backstage meeting politicians.”

But it's not all glamour, says Bruce. 'Sometimes you're tasked with taking a picture of a can of baked beans for a supermarket ad.”

Bruce is grateful to SunMedia directors Brian and Claire Rogers for the flexibility of his job and has enormous admiration for the company. But his biggest thank you goes to wife Michelle.

'I couldn't have done it without my wife. She is my rock. She makes it possible for me to be here and do what I do.”

Also at the NZ Community Awards 2016, Life+Style received its first recognition, since production in September 2015, for runner-up Best Advertising Feature or Supplement.

The Weekend Sun was a finalist in the Best All-Round Newspaper category. Judges said: 'The paper reflects its place of origin. It's warm, bright and uplifting, plus clever and often witty. It has personality and attitude which sets it above some of its more somber competition”.

Coast and Country News won Best Front Page in the associate category, as well as Best Associate Newspaper and SunLive won runner-up Best Website.