Judges reviewed entries for the 66th College Photographer of the Year Competition from Nov. 6 to 13 in Tucker Forum.
Cliff and Vi Edom founded CPOY in 1945. The competition gives college students the opportunity to put together a portfolio of their work, CPOY co-coordinator Stuart Palley said.
“For students who want to be professional photographers, it’s a chance for them to go think of stories, go shoot stories and put together the images in a professional way,” he said.
CPOY co-coordinator Kristan Lieb said the competition also serves an educational purpose.
“The people who make it (to the last few rounds) can hear really good, awesome criticisms and advice about their work from people who are really important and have been doing this for a really long time,” Lieb said. “Even if your work didn’t make it, you can watch (the judging) and learn a lot from just watching and listening.”
Any person who is currently a full-time college student or has graduated within the past semester and has less than two years of professional photographic experience can compete.
“You don’t have to be a photojournalism major,” Palley said. “You could be a biology major and submit pictures.”
An educational grant from CPOY co-sponsor Nikon, Inc. allows students to enter for free.
Entrants submit their work using an online submission system created by MU School of Journalism graduates Brett Slaughter and Ryan Gibbons. The CPOY staff verifies each entry through a computer program, ensuring each image is unedited and was taken by a college student in the time period allotted. Once the images have been verified, the staff creates a slideshow for each category.
Unlike previous years, judges reviewed still photography and multimedia separately because CPOY wanted multimedia work to be examined by judges more familiar with the genre, Lieb said.
Judges recognized Gold, Silver, Bronze and Award of Excellence winners in 13 Still Photography categories and three Multimedia categories.
MU School of Journalism 2011 graduate Patrick Fallon received both the Gold award and an Award of Excellence in Spot News and a Bronze award in Domestic Picture story. “Another Storm Approaches,” Fallon’s Gold award-winning piece, captured a scene from the aftermath of the Joplin tornado. He said he entered the contest not for the recognition, but to allow more people to see what happened in the tornado’s wake.
“A situation like this where people’s lives are at stake is not something you shoot for a portfolio,” Fallon said. “You do it because it’s your job and you want to share (the story) with other people.”
Winners of the Gold and Silver awards in the Still Photography’s Portfolio category automatically become the winner and runner-up of CPOY.
Brad Vest of Ohio University was named the College Photographer of the Year. In addition to winning the Gold award in the Portfolio category, he won Gold awards in Documentary and General News as well as the Bronze award in Portrait.
Nikolai Linares of the Danish School of Journalism was named the Runner-up College Photographer of the Year. Linares won the Silver award in the Portfolio category as well as Awards of Excellence in International Picture Story and Portrait.
More than 700 student photographers from 132 colleges and universities in 21 countries entered a total of 14,216 entries into the Still Photograph division. Palley said more international students won awards in that division than in previous years.
“This year, we had a very high number of international winners, from Spain, from Denmark, even from Bangladesh,” Palley said. “It was quite a diverse group of entrants.”