South – March 2018 – Photo Story/Essay

Judges Comments

First place had the strongest narrative and the tightest edit – a nice combination. Once we understood the story was about vigilantes (which we learned from the captions), the story flowed nicely and featured a few solid intimate moments that took us deeper into the story (funeral, sleeping ender). Second place played with color and light the best of the stories, but could have benefitted from a tighter edit (especially the food shot at the end – the second-to-last photo works well as an ender as is). We could tell there was some nice thought with the sequencing of the images (especially going from the cold-colored light of 04 to the warm-colored coals of 05) – well done! Third place also had a solid narrative and started very strong (especially the first three images), but after a while we just got bogged down. We felt that the story could have benefited from an edit including more intimate images (like 02) that push the story along instead of multiple surface-level shots of people in tents that continually tell us the same thing.

Judges: Isaac Hale/Daily Herald, Evan Cobb/Daily Herald