Top awards in 67th College Photography of the Year photo contest
By Stefanie Kilts
Photographs taken by two Colorado Mountain College photography students stood out from more than 14,000 images and received high honors in the international 67th College Photographer of the Year awards.
Beth White’s image of two Mennonite women playing pool in Doc Holliday’s Saloon in Glenwood Springs, Colo., and Guadalupe Laiz’s photograph of a couple in front of a pile of beetle-killed lodgepole pines both received awards of excellence.
“It’s a great opportunity for our students to compete on a national and international level,” said Steven G. Smith, associate photography professor, “especially since most of the other students competing are coming from much larger colleges and universities.”
White said her image was taken in a 24-hour time frame last September; she needed to re-shoot an image for her color theory class and walked into Doc Holliday’s for the first time to photograph the area near the pool table.
White’s photograph was one of five images to win top honors in the feature category and Laiz’s was one of four images in the illustration category.
Continuing college’s legacy of winning awards
Smith has encouraged students to enter the contest not only as a way to compete but also to see the work of their peers from other prestigious colleges and universities from around the world. And these are not the first kudos for CMC students. Last year student Jury Jerome earned an award of excellence in the spot news category.
Showing the reach of new media, students watch a podcast of the judging process. “It’s very exciting when a student sees their photograph come up in the judging,” Smith said. “One category had more than 1,400 photos.”
“The judging process was really an insight into the quality of imagery you need to produce to compete in the marketplace,” White said. “It was great to hear why certain images were successful and why others weren’t.”
White, who said she moved from Boston to Carbondale, Colo., largely because of the photography program at CMC, hopes to work freelance in photojournalism and creating documentaries after graduating next spring.
Two other CMC students also earned awards in the contest: Rachel Curry had one photograph and Eric Knapp had two photographs make it to the semifinalist round.
The judges overseeing the contest included photographers from National Geographic, NBC News, the Washington Post and other news venues. Judges viewed 14,100 still photographs and 218 multimedia entries submitted by 573 student photographers from 125 colleges and universities in 17 countries. The annual College Photographer of the Year competition is co-sponsored by the University of Missouri and Nikon, Inc.