Columbian photographer Nathan Howard has won top honors in a national photojournalism competition.
Howard received the Sony Best of Show award in the 2020 NPPA Best of Photojournalism competition for “Startled,” a photo that captured the moment when two hunters were surprised by a pheasant they had just flushed in a field late last year near the Port of Vancouver.
“A lot of times we say camera gear doesn’t matter — it’s about the photographer behind the lens — but in this situation, the gear mattered a lot,” Howard said in an email. “I was using a top-of-the-line Nikon D5 we purchased that year, and it allowed me to fire off five photos by the time the pheasant had left the frame.”
In addition to the Best of Show award, Howard’s image received first-place honors for sports feature photos in the competition organized by the National Press Photographer’s Association in cooperation with The Henry W. Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga.
Twenty-two judges spread over five divisions concurrently judged thousands of entries in more than 100 categories for Still Photojournalism; Video Photojournalism; Video Editing; Picture Editing; and Online Video, Presentation and Innovation.
The competition was supported and sponsored by Sony Electronics.
