In fact, many of the winning photos were far from pleasant. The top two photos from the feature category were of a Haitian girl with an amputated foot, and a group of soldiers praying in the trenches in Afghanistan. Somber subjects, to be sure, but the photos were full of emotion and able to communicate a story with just a glance. The photo of the praying soldier received second place even though some of the judges pointed out a flaw in the composition. The angle from which the photographer took the picture could have been a little better, but all the judges seemed willing to overlook it, since the image was so powerful and evocative. Initially, it looked as though the third place photo would be of an injured soldier looking at a photograph of his fiance, but it wasn't clear in the image that this is what he was looking at. Only after reading the caption did the judges know what the soldier was looking at, and that he was missing his leg. Certainly this is a moving story, but the photograph did not have the power to tell it on its own. I completely agreed with the judges decision to award third place to a photo of a gay couple before their wedding ceremony. While the caption informs this photo, it is not necessary to read it in order to understand the love and contentment on the couple's faces. Later, in the pictorial category, no judge voted to keep in a photo that I found very intriguing: an image of a young girl's face surrounded by dirt. There was no way to know who the girl was or what the surrounding circumstances were, so the photo had to go.
In addition to preferring photos that were self explanatory, the judges also considered how the photographer came upon the subject. A photo of a person dressed in a Snoopy suit observing a picture of Charles Shulz was taken out of the running for a prize because the judges were unsure if the photographer had come upon the situation naturally. Avakain pointed out that the photographer could have told Snoopy to look at the picture, and it may not have been a "found situation." Conversely, the judges decided to keep a photo in the running for an honorable mention because they liked the idea of the photographer going out to shoot photos of snow and stumbling across the image of an open-top tour bus caught in the storm. The composition was certainly fair--but nothing too noteworthy. I believe it was the "on-the-scene" quality that kept the photo in.
It was refreshing to see the judges leave room for humor among the serious topics represented in the photos. The two photos I mentioned above, of Snoopy and the bus, are certainly not images of war or devastation. One photo that received an honorable mention got quite a laugh from the judges upon reading the caption. Senator Leahy downright guffawed at the line, "The owner, seeing the scene, said Fuck. That's my fucking car. I fucking knew it would be my fucking car," in the caption for a photo of a car swallowed up by a sinkhole on Friendship Blvd. A photo of, "a crawdad out of water and looking for a fight among emergency vehicles along George Washington Parkway after a heavy thunderstorm," also won over the judges, snagging an honorable mention. They responded well to the composition of the photo, which makes great use of color, perspective and selective focus, but also to the fact that the photographer was able to use a run-of-the-mill story to produce a spectacular photo.
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| Here I am inside the theater between judging sessions. (Photo by Victor Contreras) |
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| The judges, getting ready for the pictorial category to begin. (Photo by Tricia Smith) |
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