Thank you all for your comments. They touched me deeply. Unfortunately I'll soon be DQ'd. I started selecting a picture and editing 20 minutes before cut-off and didn't notice the minimal editing rules. This is the first minimal editing competition I've entered. I didn't crop, but did auto-adjust levels and adjusted saturation. I know I would have done just fine doing it totally legal, though it would have scored somewhat lower. I apologize profusely for my negligence.
Also, I realized I was not only ethically but legally imposing on this girl, since I was on her parents' property when I took the picture. She glanced up at me when I was walking up, and then looked up again briefly when I took the shot. My shutter finger reactions aren't that good and I got lucky on her looking.
Oh, and SoulMan1978, I was not personally damaged by these fires, though I was in the evacuation zone throughout it.
The original looks like this
A nice commentary on the arbitrary nature of fire - this house is gone yet the ones behind it are still there. Well captured and nice framing (other than the spike in the middle) to show this capricious nature of fire.
Duh, I thought this challenge was ending and I was in a hurry. Ah, so now I can breathe, relax, and tell you what incredible photojournalism this is, and also art. You've caught this moment within a moment, a moment of awareness of YOU caught inside a moment of searching, a moment before she becomes self-conscious, when she is searching for a connection, a meaning, and she looks up in that search, away from what she thought she was searching for. The symphony of subject in context here is unmistakable, inevitable, surprising.
Very strong in terms of a newspaper image, this tells a story (albeit a sad one). From my own perspective there is a bit of blow out on some of the flesh tones (although I appreciate that given this is minimal editing there is little that can be done about correcting this. Still a strong image and gets an evocative 8 from me
This is probably the most impactful shot of the challenge. I wish they'd allowed advanced editing - it could have really given it some PUNCH. Sad, the story this tells, which is what photojournalism is all about. 8
Ahhhh... a headline picked right from the headlines. Nice shot that tells a helluva story. Only drawback which is about the only improvement I could see is... if this had been in Black and white, slightly overcontrasty...would have been killer! great job no matter what!!! (8)
bingo! a really killer shot would have been to have gotten a shot of her holding up something she found. while this image helps tell the story, something closer in would have made people take it to heart.
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Posthumous Blue Ribbon
