Student Photo Competition Winners Announced

The Society is pleased to announce the winners of our first-ever student photo competition. We were thrilled to receive over 250 entries from schools across the country to our Land/Sea/Air contest, and while it took us awhile to get our act together to post the victors (okay, my act), it doesn't take away from just how darn proud we are of our kids.

In first place, the winner of a load of goodies including software, photo books and even her own personally designed logo, is Tanner Ellison, a graduating senior from the University of North Texas.

"I have always been interested in finding abandoned objects," Tanner says of her winning playground slide image, taken in Dallas, near White Rock Lake. "Recently my work has moved toward the absence of human interaction in public spaces at night. I am interested in these places because of  the way that humans flock to them during the day, but stray away from them at night."

Alyssa Crawford's haunting iceberg (is that an eye??) captured the judges' attention to win the University of Delaware senior second place. Alyssa was studying abroad in Antarctica (wow) in January of 2008 when she shot the picture on an overcast day; the day of her first continental landing. "The light made the picture surreal," she says, "like I was watching a movie." Alyssa and her family plan to attend the SPD Gala, so please kiss her on both cheeks when you meet her; her folks will be extra-impressed with their little girl.

Joe Martinez from Portfolio Center in Atlanta picked up third prize for his compelling portraits, from a series that explored the lives of young active duty Marines and Sailors. Joe looked to a topic he was able to parallel with his own life experiences, as the son of two active duty US Navy parents. He notes how his subject's laid back demeanor in the first portrait starkly contrasts the responsibility she holds on her shoulders as an Ensign in the US Navy Nurse Corps.

And the judges couldn't resist Alex Miller from the University of the Arts' uhhh... interesting dead squirrel-in-a jar, so they decided to award him a special honorable mention. And of course, now we're thinking postmortem photography might make for a fabulous, sort of upbeat theme for next year's competition. We hope you'll agree.