Regardless of what your mother may have said about manners, renowned American photographer Walker Evans always touted the benefits of starring.
“Stare,” he said. “It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.”
For 38 camera-clutching students at Bainbridge High School, the pursuit of Walker’s promised knowledge reaped mighty rewards at the 2018 Washington State High School Photography Contest, held recently at Inglemoor High School.
Nearly 90 Spartan shutterbugs entered the annual contest, with 38 claiming individual awards. The school as a whole tied for sixth place overall, with several select students receiving top honors in their respective categories.
Isabella Powell (first place, Image Manipulation) and Harper Hults (second place, Architecture) both won places in the State Photography exhibition, which tours around Washington, including stops at the Seattle Art Museum, the Tacoma Art Museum and Wallingford Frame Central Gallery.
Only 33 students had work chosen for inclusion in the show.
According to BHS photography instructor Janet Neuhauser, 66 schools competed in the contest this year, entering more than 4,000 photographs in 11 categories. BHS students chose what work they wanted to enter, how many images, and were also responsible for their own presentation.
“It’s my idea that they get to decide on their own what they want to enter,” Neuhauser said. “A lot of teachers, for the contest, will tell kids to enter this or enter that, or won’t let them enter something. I don’t do that. I make them mat the photograph themselves, too.
”So, for me, it’s really a very big kid-oriented contest, and should be that way.”
Self-editing remains one of the most crucial aspects of her curriculum, Neuhauser said.
“That’s one of the big things that I teach; how to edit your photographs,” she said. “These days everybody wants to be a photographer and everybody thinks they’re a photographer, but nobody really has that critical edge — or very few people do.”
As her students have never known a time when cameras weren’t ubiquitous, and always on hand, one might think it gives them a knack.
It does not.
“I think it makes them kind of oblivious,” Neuhauser said. “I get a lot of kids who say they’re really good at photography and they’ve just shot on auto. They don’t know what an aperture is. They don’t know what shutter speed is. They don’t know what the ISO does. They don’t know what depth-of-field is. They’re just used to putting filters on in Instagram or something like that.”
A little time shooting on film, though, and fumbling about in the darkroom soon endows the snap-happy Spartans with some perspective.
“They love shooting film,” Neuhauser said. “They shoot a lot of film and they develop their film and they work in the darkroom. I think learning film, kind of learning photography the old way, teaches them more about photography.
“It’s a fairly hard class,” the teacher admitted. “The kids always say they can’t believe that photography is as hard as it is and I say, ‘Well, photography is quite difficult. I’ve been doing it for years and it is not easy.’”
Though BHS has no actual photography club, Neuhauser teaches five different photography classes and student interest, even outside of class, has been constant, the teacher said.
The Washington State High School Photography Competition began the mid 1980s. Formed by a group of high school photography instructors as a way of elevating student photography, the early competitions included just a handful of high schools and a few hundred entries. The images were collected and organized by the instructors and later judged by an impartial jury. Ribbons were awarded and the final images traveled throughout the year to be exhibited at the competing schools. It was small, informal and entirely volunteer-run.
In the 1990’s, the event attracted sponsorship and public awareness rose due to exhibits at the Seattle Art Museum, featured articles in the Seattle Times, a segment on KING TV’s Evening Magazine and New Day programs and a prestigious awards ceremony featuring Washington State Governors Mike Lowry and Gary Locke.
Listed here are all the awards BHS students received. A Select award means they were in the top 10 percent in a category. A Finalist award means they were in the top 18 percent. Numerical placing annotates the top six photographers in a category.
All the award-winning images will be displayed at The Art Project (formerly Bainbridge Arts & Crafts, 151 Winslow Way East) in downtown Winslow as part of their annual student show. Additional awards (Best of Student Show) will be presented at a reception at 4 p.m. Thursday, May 24.
Visit www.theartproject.org for more information.
2018 Washington State High School Photography Contest – BHS awards
ABSTRACT PHOTOGRAPHY
Select awards:
Gaelen Lee
Jay Pabst
Georgia Wood
ANIMAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Fifth place: Krista Pickens
Finalist award:
Tanya Stangier
Select awards:
Nina Davis
Annabelle Floyd
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
Select awards:
Harper Hults
William Kingsley
LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY
Finalist award:
Jarrah Sturgeon (two)
Select awards:
William Kingsley
Krista Pickens (two)
Tia Preston
Scott Skalak
MANIPULATION PHOTOGRAPHY
First place: Isabella Powell
Finalist award:
Sean Lindsey
Select award:
Emily Fink
Tristan Knoll (two)
Martin Vroom
PORTRAIT PHOTOGRAPHY
Finalist:
Julia Goessman
Allison Spence
Select awards:
Shalin Converse
Nina Davis
Julia Goessman (two)
Adelaide Miller
Isabella Powell
SILVER GELATIN (FILM) PHOTOGRAPHY
Fifth place:
Bryna Ross
Select award:
John Merritt
STILL LIFE PHOTOGRAPHY
Select awards:
Marcella Burkard
Shalin Converse
Dustin Grogger
Milo Keller
Anna Scott
