This stunning image of a pastel-coloured Italian village clinging to the edge of a cliff, taken by an Oxfordshire photographer, has won a national competition.

Martyn Ferry, 37, from Fulbrook, near Burford, won the landscape category in the contest run by the UK edition of National Geographic Traveller magazine.

The picture is of Manarola in La Spezia, northern Italy, which Mr Ferry visited at different times of the day to get the perfect picture.

The amateur photographer’s prize was a Nikon S6100 Red camera.

Mr Ferry said: “It was a good competition to get something in, because National Geographic is such a well-known name.

“The standard of entrants was very good and I wondered if I would get anywhere, so I’m chuffed to get first place.”

He said: “I have always enjoyed taking photos but in the past 10 years I have been taking it seriously. I went travelling for two-and-a-half years, through Australia and South East Asia, and that’s where I really started taking landscape photography seriously.

“ I took a lot of photos and it fired up my passion for it.”

Mr Ferry regularly takes pictures in the Cotswolds near his home and makes annual trips to Europe, adding: “I enjoy a good holiday, but the basis of doing it is always to get good pictures.”

His last overseas trip was to South Africa, which he won as a prize in another photography competition.

He said: “It was the first time I had been there and it had the most amazing scenery – incredible roads running through mountains. I got some really good images.”

Mr Ferry, who works in marketing for a removal company in Abingdon, said he would love to become a professional photographer. He added: “I would very much enjoy doing that but it is getting to that stage – being paid enough to do what you want to do to give up what you have to do.”

For more of Martyn Ferry’s pictures, see photograferry.com