Judges' Comments

For the Independent Best Feature Picture Story category, Blueeyes magazine had a clean sweep of first, second and third place. Our fist place winner was a close decision, finally going to 'Lost on Route 93', with 'The Lubavitch' taking second place. While both had strong, compelling photography, the judges felt that Route 93 had an original take on small town life alongside that stretch of highway. One judge remarked that it would have been nice to get a better sense of the highway itself, since it was used as an organizing tool for the piece.

Because all three winners were built in the same template, they had similar design difficulties. It took several minutes to locate the archived stories. A search would have helped, or a clearer archive navigation. A few of us wanted to see an image on the summary page and the captions lost legibility due to the transparent background. The judges also felt that the two images side-by-side were less successful and jarred the viewer from the visual flow.

Judges noted that for the Lubavich piece, the photographer did an excellent job getting inside a traditionally cloistered society. Third place went to 'Dollars and Sense'. Most judges enjoyed the photographs of consumerism, but felt the set-up was misleading (citing 9/11-fueled patriotism as the impetus for becoming a buying-based culture). The set-up didn't track through the piece and wasn't necessary -- the images were strong enough on their own.