Feature Picture Story Winners - Under

1st
(none awarded)
2nd
northjersey.com: Losing Mary
Mary Polanco did not survive. She died from her breast cancer, like over 42,000 women a year in the United States. Mary's cancer was invasive and unrelenting, and her decline was frighteningly quick. The family matriarch, she left behind two daughters and a grandson for whom the future is still uncertain. Their benefits, their housing, their survival as a unit together were all threatened by Mary's death.
3rd
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: The Season Cycle
The four seasons in photos.

Judge's Comments

Mindy McAdams
NorthJersey.com, Losing Mary
The photographer stuck with a difficult story and told it well. There are some really wonderful moments in these pictures. A good effort was made on the audio, and it enhanced the story, in spite of having too much ambient noise in the background. The judges' suggestion: Simplify everything. Select fewer photos, tighten up the text, clean up the page layout. Record and edit cleaner audio.
Navigation was an issue in this package. The thumbnail navigation images at the bottom could have been improved by using stronger images instead. The user loses track of which point in time is being viewed with the text and photos; this could be fixed by placing a marker on the timeline to show you where you are in the story. The judges agreed that the timeline takes up too much space on the screen relative to its value or usefulness.
Tighter editing could have made this a much stronger piece; with this story and these photos, it had the potential to be great.
Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, The Season Cycle
Handsome nature photos combined with clean, appealing layouts make this a standout package. The judges liked the quotes from famous writers that preface each season's photos, but the screen becomes too cluttered with text by the time all the quotes come into view. Additional text on a follow-on screen just delays our approach to the photographs, which really make this piece exceptional. The color choices for each season were very good except the yellow (summer), which looked quite gaudy when projected on a screen. (It looks much better on a monitor.) The judges felt the layouts for the text pages were markedly inferior to the photo page layouts. The autoplay feature for the photos worked well in this case.

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