Use of Photography as a Whole ( 1,501 to 3,000)Back
Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: Forest Lake Times Entry Title: Oct. 24, 2019; Feb. 13, 2020; July 9, 2020 Entry Credit: Hannah Davis, Ryan Howard Judge Comment: Nice photo packages, good candid moments and some nice sports images pushed this paper to the top.
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: Glenwood - Pope County Tribune Entry Title: Pope County Tribune - Use of Photography as a Whole Entry Credit: Pope County Tribune Judge Comment: More good candid moments, nice variety of images. Weaker sports images than the winner, and while its always great to have your best photos out front, they tended to get weaker inside the paper.
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: Blooming Prairie Steele County Times Entry Title: Use of Photography Entry Credit: Staff Judge Comment: Strong front page, not afraid to run pics nice and big! A number of instances of portraits when candid/action shots were possible, and lots of lineup portraits placed this paper below the other two.
Competition Comment: There were a number of papers that just missed the top three. The best entries all featured good candid moments, variety and run large when warranted. Their sports pages tended to have good action and reaction shots.
From the rest, there were too many submitted or courtesy photos and an overabundance of portraits. I know sometimes that's all you can get, but there were quite a few instances where it was clear people stopped what they were doing to pose for the photo - when getting them in action would provide a much better opportunity for good photos. There were also instances where the portraits were all very similar - people lined up next to each other - throughout the paper.
