Cream of the Crop, 1st Place Features

| Click to open winners gallery |Judges
The Dallas Morning News. Guy Reynolds, Mona Reeder, Gerry McCarthy, Brad Loper and Elizabeth ClaffeyF-Feature

Feature
Cream of the Crop 1st: Justin Rumbach, The Herald
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Strongest category. Good stuff from several daily situations.
FIrst is a very quiet and simple image that speaks to how love and knowledge of things is passed from generation to generation. The caption really helps this photo. Compositionally strong with the triangle. Color or b/w doesn’t really matter. What’s really nice is there is no camera consciousness seen at all. The photographer was able to blend in and get close. Even the arm jutting in from the side is an added element. Well done.
This gets the CofC award by a nose. This was difficult to come to agreement on as the GN and the sports picks were very strong too. This just seemed to be more than a kid picture (they’re older for one) and really rather classic in its content and elegance. Congrats.

2nd: Chris Howell, The Herald-Times
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Really nice quiet little slice-of-life that caused some dissension among the judges. The photo doesn’t have impact, it has detail. Every little element just adds to the enjoyment of this scene and it takes the viewer awhile to look at the whole thing. We have no idea but certainly hope this went with some type of story and wasn’t just a stand-alone feature. The straight on composition helps this too. No tricks by the photographer. No tilts, no flash.

3rd: Charlie Nye
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Hard work pays off and a little luck doesn’t hurt either. This isn’t an easy assignment to get anything other than, well, traffic. Good job working this for much more. This could have gone in the General News category since it is pegged to a news story.

HM: Charlie Nye
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patience paid off for this catch. nice and graphic and simple.

HM: Denny Simmons
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The fact that it’s a kid picture kept this in the HM range. Nice moment and interesting color in the room.

HM: Charlie Nye
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nice comp, nice little moment but the degree of difficulty isn’t near what the 3rd place had so this didn’t quite make it.

HM: Jeri Reichanadter, The Indianapo
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Okay, we loved this too. Great little moment. The fact that this is one of those things where you’re told in advance what’s going to happen makes it a little lower in the order than the top three.

GN-General_News

1st: Denny Simmons
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80% of the photos in this category are not general news. Since when is a homecoming dance/game/whatever considered a news event? Should I go on? Some of the stuff here would have been quite competitive in the feature category where they should have been.
That being said, the first place winner is a bit of a strech as a GN photo but such a fine one that we allowed for the tenuous connection to a news. What’s best about it is the fact that the paper allows the photographers time to explore an issue like this. This beats hell out of an environmental portrait. The moment, the angle and the content all add up to a layered look at a bit of the living conditions.

2nd: Melanie Maxwell
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Very close to taking the 1st place trophy. This is good GN photography displayed here. How much do we cringe at covering governmental meetings? Without describing what’s obviously seen here I’ll just say we love it all. Smart picture. It’s not over lensed so the foreground isn’t completely lost because it adds the needed context. It took awhile for me to realize what really set this apart from so many shots like this: the tapestry. It cleans up what’s usally a messy background. The photographer benefitted from this for sure.

3rd: JOSEPH C. GARZA, Tribune-Star
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The elements are there and the photographer got into position to stack them up properly. A much tighter crop would have made this pop. It’s really rather busy as is but such a fine moment of anger and grace under pressure.

HM: Charlie Nye
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Nice moment with some real emotion on such a tough day for them. nice lens choice, nice composition. Good catch from such an event.

HM: Denny Simmons
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nice picture but not remotely a news photo. We don’t care if he’s been here a day, a week, a month or a year it’s still not news. we hesitated to give it HM because of that. The homecoming shadows didn’t get one because there isn’t even a hint of news in a homecoming.

I-Illustration

1st: AJ Mast, Freelance
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Maybe this should be a biennial category? Very little here. First gets the nod simply for its lighting and the stare you were able to coax out of him. It’s not really an illustration but we realize there’s not really a “well-lit portraits” category either.

2nd: Rob Goebel
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Not bad. good studio light. There’s something just night right about that honey drizzler. It looks like it’s moldy or something. There’s a considerable amount of digital noise in it too.

3rd: Rob Goebel
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This is one of those that you scratch your head and think that it’s so simple that it’s somehow effective. NOt the greatest PS job we’ve seen and if you’re doing fruit why not find better looking fruit? A nice green leaf maybe? Someone thought the peaches were tossed up in the air. The rest of us scoffed at that notion.

S-Sports

1st: Matt Detrich/The Indianapolis St
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Very strong category as sports should be. Lots of juggling here to decide the final order.
First is simply perfect. The moment, the content, the composition, the depth of field, that background and the fact that it wasn’t players cavorting around. This one took more thinking and thought than just running a motor drive. Incredible body language.

2nd: Justin Rumbach, The Herald
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Great moment but this is exactly what we referred to in the comments about first place. This is pretty much just running a motor drive then picking the right frame. Nothing wrong with that. It’s how sports is shot by and large. It just doesn’t surpass a nicer moment found in 1st.

3rd: Chris Bergin/The Star Press
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Lots of debate about this one versus many of the good action shots. This separates from the rest because of the great concentration in the receiver’s face. The background is dropped out enough but actually not too much because the two men watching gives context and says something about the intimacy of high school sports in comparison to sports at higher levels. There’s a bit of Americana to this. It also shows that you don’t have to go to a Colts game to shoot good football.
In this age of auto focus the peak action images are simply not very difficult to make compared to years ago so they might not be getting the awards as much.

HM: Don Knight
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Great reaction from all three girls but volleyball is pretty easy for bagging jube photos. Background really hurts this.

HM: Matt Detrich/The Indianapolis St
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This was in the running to make the top three. You can’t argue about the peak action and those Marvin Harrison eyes. Nice that he does that for us. Right place at the right time by the photographer too. A fine piece of football action for sure. Most months and different judges this one probably takes ribbon.

SN-Spot_News

1st: Joel Philippsen, The Republic
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I’m sure you hear this 10 of 12 months a year but spot news is just weak. If there weren’t some minor fires there wouldn’t even be enough entries to award 3 places.
First place is not your usual spot news photo and goes well beyond a shot of twisted metal or grieving victims. This one required some quick thinking and reaction and gives the readers a bit of visual information to process. Well done.

2nd: Don Knight
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slow month so this gets the nod for second. It does have all the basic elements. Who, what, where and why with a touch of emotion. Not bad from a stale scene.

3rd: Joel Philippsen
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Banging away at grieving folks who have lost loved ones is never fun to do but quite a bit easier than the first place winner from presumably the same event. Yes there is raw emotion here but yes, when people die others cry. That may sound harsh but it’s true and too often grief photos are simply gratuitous when there are other ways of showing the news. Bummer about that pole too.

Multi

1st: Denny Simmons
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Unfortunate that there’s not a single real picture story in the bunch. There are some nice multiple-image sets though and this is very nice. Clean, good seeing, good variety with details. Nicely done. We all kind of thought the photographer really blew it by not entering one in the singles category because it would have easily won. The fiddler in the livestock stall is priceless.

2nd: Jeri Reichanadter, The Indianapo
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Really odd to award a multiple-photo award to a three-picture series but this is pretty sweet. A couple of us thought it would have been stronger if the first photo would’ve introduced the boy and the second photo would’ve been shot way tighter or cropped of the cat nuzzling his leg. But that’s second-guessing a Monday-morning quarterbacking and whatever else you want to call it. All three add more info. That’s what counts.

3rd: Greg Griffo, The Indianapolis Star
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Third place multi. We appreciate the hard work put into this to cover it from many angles but there just aren’t one or two real killer images here.