The 66th annual College Photographer of the Year awards were announced last month, selected from among more than fourteen thousand submissions. What kinds of careers can the talented young winners expect?
“It’s like you’re in the whitewater,” Rita Reed, the director of the CPOY awards, told me. “You just need to paddle. There’s no time to look around and get out of the boat, just paddle!” Reed, an associate professor of photojournalism at the Missouri School of Journalism, worked for twenty years as a photographer at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. She believes that still photography will continue to be the base of visual storytelling, but admits, “There’s a lot of gloom and doom when you talk to photographers in the field.”
Alice Gabriner, a CPOY judge and senior photo editor at National Geographic, found the contest inspiring. “Looking at the thousands and thousands of images in Missouri, I was reminded how a still image can so effectively and succinctly tell a story,” she said. “Students understand how difficult the market is, and they’re eager and interested because they know they have to invent something new.”
Here’s a selection of photographs from some of the participants in this year’s contest, and their thoughts on their chosen profession.
