Best of Photojournalism 2009: TV News Photography: Winners

Clips from the Video News Photography and Editing winners in the Best of Photojournalism 2009 are now viewable at Poynter Online.

Chat with Al Tompkins and the BOP TV judges — live each day at 12:00 EST. Ask the judges questions and hear what they love and have learned from the entries they have seen each day.

TV Deadline News Photography Finalists

(In Alphabetical Order)

“$3.79”
Jon Samuels WXIA Atlanta
“Cheap Gas”
Everett McEwan KWGN Denver
“Daddy’s Little Girl”
Matt Passolt KARE Minneapolis
“Flood Recovery”
Brad Ingram WGHP High Point
“Homeowners Worst Nightmare”
Everett McEwan KWGN Denver
“If Only for an Hour”
John Duong WNDU South Bend
“Live or Die”
Ernesto Torres KHOU Houston
“The Flood”
Wade Smith KTVI St. Louis
“You Call This a Stadium?!”
Michael DelGiudice WNBC New York

Deadline News Winners

1st
“Live or Die”
Ernesto Torres, KHOU/Houston
2nd
“If Only for an Hour”
John Doung, WNDU/South Bend
3rd
“You Call This a Stadium?!”
Michael DelGiudice, WNBC/New York
HM
“Homeowners Worst Nightmare”
Everett McEwan, KWGN/Denver

Judges’ comments

Terry Bulger
  1. Live or Die
    The effort here to capture the hurricane as it was happening is worthy of this award. I liked the writing as well. Dramatic...and a willingness to take my into the story, instead of staying out on its perimeter.
  2. If Only for an hour
    Good effort in capturing what was going on here in this gas station lot. I thought the character (the man in the car with the dollar bill) helped me understand the frenetic feeling those 60 minutes were like. Above average photography and editing made watching it easy.
Scott Jensen

For me the top two stories in this category have an equal number of errors. I am able to forgive those in Live or Die because the photographer worked in near hurricane-force winds. The photographer captured good images and compelling characters under obvious time constraints while shooting If Only for an Hour. I am dismayed that Daddy’s Little Girl has one of the best moments I’ve seen in a long time but didn’t even place because of structuring and writing issues.

Jon Knorr

This category had the most disparate stories. Some were true breaking news and some were feature stories. This made it hard to pick a clear winner. The deciding factor were the heavy winds of a hurricane. Being able to work in that environment and to travel over town was the deciding factor. If Only For an Hour was a well thought out piece with good moments.

Shane McEachern

There wasn’t a clear winner for this entry. Nothing really stood out as much as we would have liked so picking a winner took some time. I personally liked the gas story “If Only For An Hour” because of the story and the hussle involved with shot variety and the best reporting of the bunch. It had some technical flaws which some found to be distracting, so it got docked in the end overall.

“Daddy’s Little Girl” was a story which had tremendous promise but lost it all with some sub-standard reporting and some shooting which had some distracting edits and needed some cutaways and tight shots. The moment in this story was as powerful as anything I’ve seen today and it is a shame this couldn’t have gotten a higher placing in the finals because of the overall presentation. Bums me out this couldn’t have gotten the blue ribbon.

1st LIVE OR DIE wasn’t my first choice but it got the job done under windy and tough weather circumstances. This story seemed to scream “Deadline” to alot of the judges and it made it to the top at the end of the day. They obviously worked very hard to get the story on the air, various locations in very bad conditions, and they put themselves in harms way getting those shots of the water coming over the levee which could have been a front row seat for disaster if things would have gone differently.

2nd IF ONLY FOR AN HOUR good effort overall, my fave of the bunch, good personalities in the interviews, and a nice moment with one of the customers, not technically perfect (watch those jump-cuts) and some didn’t like that in the end.

3rd YOU CALL THIS A STADIUM well shot story, good hustle, nice central character but overall it left some confused and wondering what the actual story was. Placed because of the effort and the videography, docked because of the fact most missed the actual point of the story.

HM HOMEOWNERS WORST NIGHTMARE very strange start to the piece. I didn’t get the 3 random shots let alone make out what they were. Great hustle on this story, photographer worked their butt off and it showed. The actual storyline was a little all over the place and we were waiting to find out about the one character’s deaf husband and what happened to them in the end. If a story is going to go down a path on something it should follow up on the end result. It left us hanging and got moved down the list because of this.

Tom Sharkey

There were too many ordinary stories submitted in this category, a few that had the possibility of being more than ordinary but didn’t rise to the occasion. One had the best moment of the whole category but the reporter and photographer didn’t know how to execute that properly. That said, Live or Die was the top choice even though the ending was overly dramatic. Shooting under Hurricane or Tropical storm conditions is tough, add-in deadline pressure with a rush to get on the air and you have an almost impossible mix to get anything good out of that but this photographer did. There were some good moments but it was just rock solid shooting under really bad circumstances that made this the number 1 choice. If only for an hour had some good moments with the guy waiting in line to get gas, but there were some problems with jump cuts and crossing the 180 line. 3rd and HM went up for a vote, I thought they should have been flip-flopped because although #3 was shot well there wasn’t much story there.

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