NPPA: Best of Photojournalism 2007: Web Site Winners:

3rd Place

The Roanoke Times

A grandfather takes in his son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren to live with him in his home to help care for his two disabled grandchildren.

Comments (Regina McCombs)

We had a lot of interesting discussion around this category – questions of how to weigh reach against achievement, technical problems against story value, and the value of reporting and narrative against creativity and expertise. We didn’t find any answers, but ended with a fairly strong division among the judges.

What we agreed on about this category overall: many of the stories felt rushed and not as well thought-out as they should have been. A single interview and photos made up the majority of the pieces, and this worked for some and not as well for others. Photographers need to learn to think about the storytelling as they go and be more thoughtful about focus from the start. That means finding a beginning, middle and end, paying attention to the audio that’s happening as photos are taken, and capturing moments in audio as well as we do in the photography.

First was a contentious choice. Everyone agreed that it was beautiful, watchable, the right length and well-constructed, but lack of a narrative story was a huge minus for some judges and they felt it should never be given a first place. Others felt like it took a risk and won big artistically, and was a non-traditional way of telling a story.

Katie’s story was the strongest all-around narrative, but the technical issues in the audio and weakness of some of the photos drove it down for some judges. Overall, judges felt that achieved an intimacy none of the other stories did, and had wonderful audio moments that came outside of the interview as a natural part of the coverage.

The jazz festival had a big reach – seven days of slide shows, some good photography and audio, but most of the pieces never quite came together. Still, as an effort to turn a week of stories in as many days, it was a lot of work and there were some very nice photographs and moments spread throughout. But stories felt like a mish-mash – a cross between event coverage and thematic stories that never quite hit the mark. Some judges felt there was a lack of sense of place. With a more organized approach both in topic and photography, this could have been a knock-out.

The golden arches (my personal favorite) was a terrific small story that missed on a few notes. The natural sound was well done and probably the best example of complementary sound and photography, with a charming central character. It could have benefited from a tighter edit and a visually cleaner ending. Some judges felt like it was a missed opportunity to do a wider story – many said they were left with lots of unanswered questions. One judge said he would have liked to see fewer photos left up for a longer time.

Down the street was visually strong, and had a good story, with a good story structure, but was missing natural sound that would have added so much more texture to the story.

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BOP 2007 > Web Site Winners > Feature Audio Slideshow (Smaller Affiliated Sites)