Winning Images

This weekend I was able to listen to 6 very inspiring visual journalists and photographers speak and meet and chat with a few of them at the Midwest Photo Summit put on by the Illinois Press Photographers Association. Several of those speakers also judged professional work in the IPPA's Best of Photography competition and they gave awards to a few of the images and stories I entered.

The winning images are posted on IPPA's website: http://www.ippaonline.org/blog/

My sports picture story about Danika, the 14-year-old fighter took 2nd place in the Sports picture story category. The whole story can be seen here: http://kylebursaw.com/aspiring-champion/

I also took 1st place in general news category with my photo of Matt taking his drug test.

My photo of the Sycamore volleyball coach reacting to finally besting rival DeKalb after numerous consecutive losses took 2nd place in the sports feature category.

The recovery of John Hahn

John Hahn is a DeKalb art teacher who suffered a ruptured brain aneurysm on November 21, 2011 just before his morning commute to work. The aneurysm caused him to fall and caused a few other injuries, including a hip injury that required surgery. These images are from his rehab sessions, his first day driving and his first day back to school.

Along Lincoln Highway

A reporter at a sister newspaper was writing a story that had a lede describing the main highway running through DeKalb on the way to Huskie Stadium in a longer piece about the Orange Bowl-bound Huskies bursting out of a small town without the greatest of facilities onto this national stage.

Well, the angle of the story changed after I shot these and most of these never got used, but I wanted to share anyway.

A season gone

I think in just about any smaller community, high school football reigns supreme. At least in terms of importance of coverage. Since August, I've been shooting portraits, practices and a quarter or two of football each Friday night. (We have an early deadline on Fridays and thus I need to submit my work before the games have ended). Here's a handful of shots from the season.

The lone tree

This is one of those photos I've known I wanted to take for awhile, unfortunately me being in the right place at the right time has usually coincided with me being on a deadline that couldn't wait 5 minutes. Last week I finally got a chance to stop and take this photo.