Place Name: First Place Contestant Name: UT-Arlington Entry Title: Powwow uplifts Native American culture Entry Credit: Ronaldo Bolaños Judge Comment: None
Place Name: Second Place Contestant Name: UT-Arlington Entry Title: Celebration Spray Entry Credit: Christine Vo Judge Comment: None
Place Name: Third Place Contestant Name: A&M-College Station Entry Title: Keeper of the Archives Entry Credit: Samuel Falade Judge Comment: None
Competition Comment: Moments, emotion and composition separated the winners from the rest of the category here.
There were plenty of nice photos, but the category as a whole was marred by some surprisingly thin captions.
Many entries in the category were portraits, or one-on-one interactions with a subject from a few feet away. Those situations cry out for - at minimum - the name of the person pictured. But in most cases in this category did not.
Absent these journalism basics, photojournalists risk reducing the human beings in our images to little more than inanimate objects.
In all of our work, and particularly in the context of contest celebrate student journalism, we need to aim a bit higher.
