Judges Comments

First Place – This package stood out not only because of excellent photography but for the care that went into its curation. Pulling from a year's worth of material is daunting, and there is a nice balance between aesthetic and the most important news topics of the year. Sections were effective in evoking an emotional impact as well as serving as a record of those events. Wire imagery was used nicely along with staff work to maintain a cohesion across the work and using size and sequence to pace the viewer and leverage impact to the most important and/or most beautiful images. Second Place – While a very tight edit, each image accomplishes the theme of this package. Each image has color as a driving force and revealed aspects of India that would not have been possible should the same image been made in black and white. Third Place – There are some wonderful images in this package that strike to the story of family life in rural Montana such as 3,4,5, and 9. Others while nice to look at, seemed redundant and held the set back from being as strong as it could have been. 2,7, and 10 all give the same structural feel and would have been nice to cut one or two. Image 9 while lovely, doesn't seem to contribute to the collective or give valuable information to the story focus. Keep developing the story until you have all the pieces or make it tighter.