Honestly, "Stampede of One" was clearly the best! We loved the nats, pacing and the story was well told. Wonderful shot variety and we loved the interview shot of the kids on the second floor balcony. There was a logical beginning, middle and an end. This is an example of storytelling and obviously the reporter and photojournalist were on the same page. But above all, this story had the 2 most memorable shots in the entire category. The photojournalist did a great job of capturing the buffalo jumping between two cars!! Then there was the helicopter shot of the buffalo being shot. We did hope there was some discussion of whether to include the shot as we believe some newsrooms would have objecting to using it. But clearly, this station did not have a problem with airing it. Overall, the photojournalist and reporter should be proud of the story and work they did!
This group of photojournalists has talent and everyone clearly put forth a very good effort. There was something great about each story. Some photojournalists had obviously thought about their ending shot, some stories had fantastic pacing, great nats, nice shot selection and a few captured some good action-reaction. That said, the exact opposite could be said for some of the stories and they could have been better. A few of the stories could have been stronger had they not contained soo many wide shots and had more shot variety. In a couple of the stories, the natural sound or even the sound bites could not be understood! Pacing seemed uneven in a few and the reporters and photojournalists were not always on the same page. In a few stories the video and reporter track had nothing to do with each other... aside from the fact that it was video from the same scene... a fire. But again, overall we did enjoy the work we saw. The effort comes through!
