What a pleasure seeing a different variety of sports including cow wrangling. Which produces really cool moments that made the judges job more difficult. This category showed excellent use of long lens to clean up backgrounds making the peak action pop out of the frame.
First: Peak action of the runner sliding with interesting cropping and a clean background. The photographer did an excellent job putting themselves in the correct spot.
Second: The cowboy's expression and flying dirt made this frame. Glad to see the photographer used the correct gear to clean up messy rodeo backgrounds.
Third: The eyes have it in this photo. Good job using a higher angle to concentrate on faces of athletes.
Judges:
Caroline Couig/Independent visials editor, Bradley E. Clift/Contract Photographer - U.S. Coast Guard Academy
Judges Comments
What a pleasure seeing a different variety of sports including cow wrangling. Which produces really cool moments that made the judges job more difficult. This category showed excellent use of long lens to clean up backgrounds making the peak action pop out of the frame. First: Peak action of the runner sliding with interesting cropping and a clean background. The photographer did an excellent job putting themselves in the correct spot. Second: The cowboy's expression and flying dirt made this frame. Glad to see the photographer used the correct gear to clean up messy rodeo backgrounds. Third: The eyes have it in this photo. Good job using a higher angle to concentrate on faces of athletes.