Newspaper takes home 1st and 2nd place prizes for photography BY VOICE STAFF The Voice has been awarded for excellence in photography through News Media Canada’s 2019 Canadian Community Newspaper Awards competition.
Newspaper takes home 1st and 2nd place prizes for photography
BY VOICE STAFF
The Voice has been awarded for excellence in photography through News Media Canada’s 2019 Canadian Community Newspaper Awards competition.
The paper won 1st Place in the Best Photo Illustration category (all circulation levels) for “Photo of Brenda,” which accompanied the Column Six article, “A Valentine’s Day story,” by Bill Eluchok, published February 14 2018. Eluchok’s story recounted an early teenage romance in the mid-1950s, and its rekindling decades later. The illustration superimposed a photograph that the 16-year-old Eluchok took of his 13-year-old girlfriend in 1955, as she stood in front of her uncle’s brand-new home on Haist Street, in Fonthill, against a modern colour image from a similar vantage point. Since the article ran in February, and the 1955 image was taken in the summer, Voice publisher Dave Burket adapted a summer Google Streetview image, as permitted under the company’s licensing terms, to match Eluchok’s photo.
The Voice won 2nd Place in the Best Spot News Photo category (circulation 4000-12,499) for “Hands Up,” an original staff image that ran on the cover of the newspaper’s July 25 2018 edition, accompanying the article, “Saturday at Summerfest.” The explanatory text accompanying the entry appears below.
News Media Canada is a professional association representing some 800 publications in every province and territory.
Hands Up. DAVE BURKET PHOTO
While the Town of Pelham's annual Summerfest is a planned event, the sudden, unannounced arrival of Ontario's recently elected Premier, Doug Ford, was not. On a hot July day, Town and Regional politicians scrambled to get to the event to avail themselves of photo-ops. His Ontario Provincial Police protectors on the periphery, Ford slowly glad-handed the crowd. His primary aide (blue suit, with satchel), seriously overdressed for a midsummer weekend street fair, occasionally whispered in Ford's ear. The local pols trailed closely, alert to prospective selfies. What only Ford knew, as he strolled along, was that in just a few days' time he would upend Niagara Region politics by cancelling its race for Regional Chair—and in this image are the two leading candidates for the job. So we see, centre, Ford, his back turned to them and us, speaking with a resident. At centre right, in white, is the town mayor, hair oiled, much a metaphor among many for his perceived slipperiness. Behind him, also in white, the then-incumbent Regional Chair, whose controversial tenure virtually guaranteed his defeat, even had Ford not cancelled the election. In the foreground, meanwhile, blissfully ignorant of the power and power-seeking tableau behind him, a young boy blows soap bubbles. They float in the humidity, borne as much by rhetorical hot air as by the summer breeze. Like political promises, one by one the bubbles dissolve, almost as if they'd never been made at all.
