Picture This Area Teens Snap Up Photo Awards

Shadle Park and Saint George’s schools represented Spokane well at the Washington State High School Photography Competition. The two schools brought back 45 awards with St. George’s taking fourth place overall and Shadle Park finishing 17th.

The juried competition took place May 10 in Seattle. Some of the winning photos were recently displayed at the Seattle Art Museum. More than 2,100 student photographs were submitted from 52 high schools throughout the state. Last year, 36 schools competed and nearly 1,300 photos were judged.

This year’s competition was tougher, said Mike Kelly, photography teacher at St. George’s. In the past, St. George’s had come back with second and third place overall finishes, he said.

Shadle Park photography teacher Nina Stoddard said this was the best year for her school in terms of numbers of awards, but added that in past years students have captured more top three awards.

Spokane students garnered most of the top six awards in the color competition with Ty Garland from St. George’s taking second and fifth and Shadle Park’s Sarah Hoffman and Brooke Davis taking fourth and sixth, respectively.

Shadle Park’s Matt Kenall took second in the computer competition while St. George’s Jaime Appling took sixth. In the hand-coloring category, St. George’s Ana Stricklen took third while Appling took fifth in the landscape/seascape category and Steve Park won third place in the sports and activities category.

Selecting which photos to submit to the competition is “quite a production” Stoddard said. Nearly 1,800 photos from Shadle were whittled down to the approximately 280 photos submitted to the state competition. “We try to give everybody a voice in the show who did a good job,” Stoddard said.