West – February 2017 – Photo Story/Essay

Judges Comments

First is a gorgeously shot look at a horse race park. Every image adds something different to the story and there are some truly beautiful shots. The bugle player is probably the best single image of the entire set of images in all categories. Really nice work here using a variety of lenses and angles to capture great moments and pictorial images. Second goes to a refugee church in Texas. Thanks for coming here to do a story. Several very nice images from services and elsewhere. The one thing that really bothered us was the image of a child on a woman's lap and a man with a child in the background. In the story the focus is on the two in the back yet the caption IDs the foreground pair who are out of focus. And an alternate frame with the foreground pair in focus was entered in Feature Single. We didn't award it even though it was as strong as anything in the category. Since the story was going to place in multiple we felt like it was kind of gaming the system entering an outtake in another category. AND, the outtake was considerably better than the one in the story. Huh? Third gets major kudos for handling a tough assignment well. All the people are unidentifiable yet there are still strongly composed images and moments captured. Well done.

Judges: Guy Reynolds/Dallas Morning News, Michael Hamtil/Dallas Morning News, Ashley Landis/Dallas Morning News