ST. PETERSBURG, FL (March 26, 2008) - On the second full day of judging at NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism competition at The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, judges picked winners in the categories Sports Photojournalist of the Year, Non-Traditional Journalism Publishing, Sports Picture Story, Sports Portfolio, Celebrity Picture Story, Natural Habitat, Domestic News, Serial Portrait, Local Portrait & Personality, and The Road To Office.
Each day at 1 p.m. EST during the judging The Poynter Institute for Media Studies, in partnership with NewsU, will host a live series of Webcasts from the Best Of Photojournalism judging. By watching, you'll get an inside look at the Still Photography and Web categories as they're judged, and Poynter's host Kenneth F. Irby will conduct a 15-minute live interview and conversation with a different BOP judge each day. In case you miss the daily Web cast they will be archived on the Poynter Web site. They're free, and you can enroll in the NewsU "course" online here.
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Fei Maohua of the Xinhua News Agency is the Sports Photojournalist of the Year. Second place in the category is Donald Miralle, Jr., of Getty Images and third place is Ezra Shaw of Getty Images AsiaPac.
"The first place winner was a unanimous choice of the judges," judge Deanne Fitzmaurice said. "Each image is strong, just beautiful seeing and artistic work on behalf of the photographer. The pictures were story telling in a unique and fresh way. The judges liked all the pictures and the entry held together as a portfolio. The entry was nicely edited; there were no weak photographs. The portfolio was very strong even though it did not contain a picture story."
"The second place portfolio had nice variety but what kicked it was it had a strong picture story about Mexican wrestling as well," judge Dudley Brooks said. "The story gave the entry more dimension."
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In the Domestic News category, first place is Alan Hawes of The Post & Courier. Second place is Monica Lopossay of The Baltimore Sun, and third place is Aaron J. Latham of the Arizona Daily Star. Honorable Mentions were awarded to Michael Mancuso of The Times in Trenton, NJ, and Jason Arthurs of The News & Observer.
"The first, second, and third place winners really illustrated the meaning of spot news," Brooks said. "The photographer got to the scene when the events happened, not a half hour or even an hour after the event happened. The honorable mention winning photographs were taken well after the events."
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In the Serial Portrait Package category, first place is Chris Schneider of the Rocky Mountain News. Second place is Lyle Owerko of Planet magazine, and third place is Paula Bronstein of Getty Images. Honorable Mentions were awarded to freelancer Julie Denesha, and Melanie Burford of The Dallas Morning News.
"It was difficult to choose which one of the top two entries should be awarded first and second place," Brooks said. "Content-wise, the first place entry held together better and was photographically stronger than the second place entry. The first-place photographer put good thought into how to portray each one of these people individually, and kept the photographs consistent in the use of light, color and composition."
Calvert said, "The third place winner portraying women burned by acid showed the dignity and sensitivity of the individuals being photographed." Fitzmaurice said, "They are hard to look at, but it's important that we see them."
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In the Local Portrait & Personality category, first place is Ted Jackson of The Times-Picayune. Second place is Steve Traynor of the Killeen Daily Herald, and third place is freelancer Shiho Fukada. Honorable Mentions were awarded to Wendell Phillips of GlobePress Images; Balazs Gardi of VII Network; and Faith Ninivaggi.
"This was a hard category to judge. Coming to an agreement on the order of the winning entries was difficult and involved lengthy discussions," Calvert said. "However, the decision came quickly for awarding first place to the image of the man with the American flag draped over his shoulders while standing on the remains of concrete steps, which was once part of his mother's home in New Orleans. The home was destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. There were a lot of great layers to this picture. The second place winner was a beautiful picture of an elderly woman wearing a wedding veil on her head, which she put on as part of a Halloween costume. The judges referred to the third place winner as 'Blue Boy.' The photograph is very arresting and the eyes are intense. The color and mood is beautiful.”
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In The Road To Office category, first place is Pete Souza of The Chicago Tribune. Second place is Alex Wong of Getty Images, and third place is Brooks Kraft of Corbis shooting for Time magazine. An Honorable Mention was awarded to Brian Baer of The Sacramento Bee.
"I really liked the picture of the young people looking at Sen. Obama," Jens Kristian Soegaard said. "The youth were perhaps finding new hope and eventually some might become new prospects for coming presidents. It is a good moment captured very well. The second place winning entry is quite different. It's also a funny moment showing how you have to behave perhaps if you want to become president, or perhaps how you behave if you don't want to become the president. Third place winner shows the hype about the primary campaign with all these photo opportunities that are given for the press. You see all these photographers gathered around the candidate. The photographs show that it is an important year in American politics."
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In the Celebrity Picture Story category, first place is Pete Souza of the Chicago Tribune. Second place is Barbara Davidson of the Los Angeles Times, and third place is Christopher Morris of VII Agency shooting for Time magazine.
"The three winners in this category showed how the photographers universally took the reader beyond the traditional dog-and-pony-show event pictures," judge Mary F. Calvert said. "They gave a personal portrait of each candidate."
"First place winning entry about presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama had a lead picture that we absolutely loved," Fitzmaurice said. "It was a well-photographed story and every picture is nice and you get a sense of the man. It's an intimate look into the man and his family. The photography takes the viewer into the story. The second place winner is a story about John Edwards. The story also contained well-shot images and gave you an intimate view of Edwards. Overall, nicely edited, nice moments with nice clean photography. The third place story is about Republican candidate Sen. John McCain. The story had good images and a non-traditional way of looking at McCain."
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In today's other winners, in the Non-Traditional Photojournalism Publishing category, first place is Victor J. Blue of The Discovery Channel. Second place is David Healey of ZUMA Press, and third place is Louie Palu of ZUMA Press.
“In this category the judges felt there were a lot of entries that didn’t hold together," Fitzmaurice said. "They weren’t really stories, they were a collection of photographs and there was too much redundancy. The three stories - prison, cancer and mining story - told compelling stories. Each picture was a storytelling image.”
"First and second place winners were both very strong entries," judge Mary F. Calvert said. "Each one had a narrative and the pictures were edited well. The first place winning entry about a prison evoked strong emotion. When you looked at the pictures you could really smell them, it’s as if you were in the prison and you get a sense of the crowed situation. You look at them and you don’t want to be there. Second place was compelling. This entry contained a beautiful set of personal pictures, which earned it second place. Third place was also a strong entry but lacked the same emotion of the first and second place winners.”
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In Sports Picture Story, first place is Magnus Wennman of Aftonbladet. Second place is Steven Achiam from Dagbladet Borsen/Grazia Neri, and third place is Wennman again. Honorable Mentions were awarded to Robert Gauthier of the Los Angeles Times, Tomasz Gudzowaty of Yours Gallery, and Balazs Gardi of VII Network (on assignment for Sports & News).
"The surfing story was a unanimous choice of the judges," Calvert said. "It captured the soul of surfing in every picture. The second place winner, sumo wrestling, was also an interesting nice complete story. The diverse photography told a story of sumo life inside and outside the gym. Third place winner, womens body builder, was also very strong and gave us a different look of what it is like to participate in that sport."
"Many of the entries had too many photographs and a tighter editing of picture stories would improve the presentation and story telling," Jens Kristian Soegaard said. "Several entries that could have made it to the final round were eliminated because of weak editing. Often times, less is more."
"All the winning photographers took subject matter and applied a point of view and a concept to all of their work. They are not the same old sports stories," Brooks said. "They were different topics handled in interesting ways."
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In the Natural Habitat category, first place is George Rizer of The Boston Globe. Second place is Daniel Beltra, and third place is Bryan Patrick of the The Sacramento Bee. An Honorable Mention was awarded to RJ Sangosti of The Denver Post.
"The first place winner of the bird scooping up the fish with its beaks is nothing short of outrageously great timing," Brooks said. "The photographer nailed the picture; I have never seen anything like this before. It's a phenomenal photograph."
"Second place winning image of the bears is a sweet and tender moment," Fitzmaurice said. "Great clean composition and a tender moment."
"I loved the photo of the three owls," Jens Kristian Soegaard said. "The photograph was taken under challenging lighting conditions. The way the owls are looking out of their nest is wonderful. All three winning pictures in this category are fantastic."
"The [Honorable Mention] photograph of the lightning bolt and the church is a moment that represents the essence of the Natural Habitat category," judge Suzette Moyer said.
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Yesterday judges picked winners in the Still Photography categories of Art of Entertainment, Conceptual Photographic Illustration, News Portrait and Personality, Sporting Field of Play, Sports Action, and Sports Enterprise.
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Photographers from more than 140 countries entered this year's Best Of Photojournalism competition, which has remained a free contest with no entry fees since its beginning. More than 4,000 people entered the contest, up more than 25 percent over last year, and there are more than 21,000 entries totally over 58.000 individual items (photogrpahs, clips, and Web sites).
Winners of each day's categories will be announced daily on the NPPA Web site, and the BOP's Photojournalists of the Year and the winner of Cliff Edom's "New America Award" will be announced at the end of the week.
Judges for this year's Best Of Photojournalism still photography categories are Dudley Brooks, formerly of The Washington Post and who is now with Ebony/Jet Magazines; Suzette Moyer of the St. Petersburg Times; Jens-Kristian Soegaard, the director of photography for Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten (the main daily newspaper in Denmark); Mary F. Calvert of The Washington Times; and Deanne Fitzmaurice of the San Francisco Chronicle.
Judges of BOP's Web categories are Ellyn Angelotti, an adjunct faculty member and editor for The Poynter Institute for Media Studies in St. Petersburg, FL; Michelle Maltais, a deputy editor of business and technology for the Los Angeles Times' Web site; Irwin Thompson, the deputy director of photography for The Dallas Morning News; Seth M. Gitner, a multimedia journalist for Roanoke.com and The Roanoke Times; and Thea Breite, multimedia photography editor for The Boston Globe.
NPPA's Best Of Photojournalism judging is sponsored this year by Apple, Canon USA, NPPA, and The Poynter Institute for Media Studies. On-site Still Photography judging is powered by Aperture.
