O’Hara wins College Photographer of the Year
Caitlin O’Hara, BAJ’14, was named College Photographer of the Year, one of her photos won Best of Show and she placed third in the professional competition of the Indiana News Photographers Association’s annual contest.
Senior Glory Sheeley was college runner up and Dave Weatherwax of the Dubois County Herald won Photographer of the Year in the professional competition.
“I’m honored to have been in such great company at INPA,” O’Hara said through email, as she is completing a Ross Hazeltine Travel Scholarship project in Seoul, South Korea, this spring. “The other folks in the competition are my mentors and friends, and everyone did a great job this year. It’s wonderful to be able to honor each other’s hard work each year. “
Many of O’Hara’s portfolio photos were taken while she was an intern at the Dubois County Herald last summer. In the pro competition, she took first and second place in the features category, where her first place entry was named Best of Show; second in sports feature; third in general news; and honorable mention in portrait/personality and spot news.
In the collegiate category, she took first and second in both features and sports, and claimed all three top spots in news. Senior Mark Felix won an honorable mention in sports.
Judging was Friday and Saturday at Ernie Pyle Hall, and judges critiqued students’ portfolios, then showed their own work Friday evening.
Judges included Rob Hart, a freelance photographer in Chicago; Whitney Curtis, a freelance photographer in St. Louis; and Matt Stone of the (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal critiqued the photos while several of the student entrants listened and watched.
“This one is my favorite. It really shows the personality of those pictured,” Hart said about the photo that won first place in the features competition.
Not every photo received high praise from the judges, however.
“That caption sucks, it needs a better story,” Hart said. He and the other judges emphasized the importance of names of those depicted in the features. “You’re killing me, guys, with your captions.”
During the assessments of the news category photos, judges were more concerned with the composition of the photos, as in who or what was included in the frame.
Associate professor Jim Kelly has organized for the event at IU for several years, and said it gives students an opportunity to see what the judges are looking for in each photo, as well as the chance to see the work of professionals in the field.
The college competition was separated into four different categories: features with 90 entries, news with 37 entries, sports with 46 entries, portfolio with 13 entries and the overall college photographer of the year.
At 7 p.m. Friday, the three judges presented their own work. Stone, AS’93 (journalism certificate), presented his work first. He spoke of the challenges resulting from news organizations cutting photojournalists from their staffs, such as photographers taking on multiple roles within the newsroom and the switch to shorter deadlines.
“I don’t really know where this business is heading, but I know strong storytelling will always be in demand,” he said. “It just seems like we get less and less time to do stuff.”
He showed videos he created for the Courier-Journal, both online and through social media outlets like Instagram. Photojournalists now have to be sort of a “jack of all trades.”
“I didn’t graduate from IU to be a fashion photographer,” he said while showing fashion shots of a Churchill Downs preview. “But it’s kind of fun to play with lights and work with a model.”
Curtis has been a freelance photographer in St. Louis for seven years, most recently photographing the riots in Ferguson for The New York Times. She went arrived in Ferguson the night before her Aug. 11 assignment.
“It took me a while to realize what was going on. I had never experienced looting before,” Curtis said. “I called my husband to let him know where I was, just in case.
“The police were really turning on the media and were trying to prevent us from doing our jobs,” she said. She watched as tear gas was thrown at reporters from Al Jazeera.
She made a pact with other photographers to stick together for safety reasons, even if it meant getting similar photos.
“My faith in photojournalism and its impact has been renewed. It’s a wonderful feeling to make people feel something through your photos,” she said of the experience.
Sophomore Bari Goldman was trying to learn all she could from the presentations.
“I’ve seen Whitney’s photos from Ferguson before, and they are incredible, so I really wanted to hear her speak,” she said. “It’s interesting to hear the different techniques and what the future looks like for photojournalism.”
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