Freelance photographer Photojournalist Lynn Johnson is known for her intense and sensitive work. She divides her time between assignments for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, where she is a Staff Photographer. Over the course of her career she has been honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged and numerous World Press Awards and Pictures of the Year Awards: the most recent of which was awarded in the 2002 Issues Reporting category for her story "Weapons of Mass Destruction."
She earned a B.A. in Photographic Illustration and Photojournalism at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1975. After graduating, she was a Staff Photographer at The Pittsburgh Press for seven years before beginning her freelance career as a contract photographer for Black Star. She is currently a member of Aurora Picture Agency.
Johnson was recently a Knight Fellow in the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University, where she completed a rigorous year-long program concluding with her masters thesis - a forthcoming book about the impact of hate crimes on American society, Hate Kills.
Lynn Johnson: Judge
Freelance photographer Photojournalist Lynn Johnson is known for her intense and sensitive work. She divides her time between assignments for National Geographic and Sports Illustrated, where she is a Staff Photographer. Over the course of her career she has been honored with the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for Coverage of the Disadvantaged and numerous World Press Awards and Pictures of the Year Awards: the most recent of which was awarded in the 2002 Issues Reporting category for her story "Weapons of Mass Destruction."
She earned a B.A. in Photographic Illustration and Photojournalism at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1975. After graduating, she was a Staff Photographer at The Pittsburgh Press for seven years before beginning her freelance career as a contract photographer for Black Star. She is currently a member of Aurora Picture Agency.
Johnson was recently a Knight Fellow in the School of Visual Communications at Ohio University, where she completed a rigorous year-long program concluding with her masters thesis - a forthcoming book about the impact of hate crimes on American society, Hate Kills.
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Fred Sweets: Judge
Fred Sweets has spent his entire life in the newspaper business, growing up under the tutelage of his father, N. A. Sweets, publisher of the St. Louis American. He began his career as a staff photographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in 1968. A decade later, Mr. Sweets moved on to the Washington Post, covering presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush, as well as the 1992 Los Angeles riots, daily news, features and sports. He also worked as the senior photo editor for the Los Angeles Times and was the Chief of Photos for the Associated Press, Washington Bureau, AP's largest bureau worldwide.
In 1997, Mr. Sweets headed up Diverse Visions, a week-long multi-cultural photojournalism workshop for aspiring college-level photojournalism students and directed AP's summer internship program for aspiring photographers and photo editors.
Throughout his career, Mr. Sweets has served on committees and judged photo competitions designed to advance photojournalism.
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Teri Boyd: Judge
Teri Boyd has two documentary projects underway - Paul Revere Elementary School and Neighborhood - a project to document a changing school and the neighborhood around it; and CITY2000 - a collection of images that document the city of Chicago during the year 2000. Teri formerly was a picture editor for the Seattle Times, where she and the newspaper's web staff introduced new multi-media technologies into the workings of the newsroom. She was awarded the 2003 Society of News Design Gold Award for Two Peoples One Land, and 2003 Best of Photojournalism Award of Excellence for Best Use Picture Editing. She also worked as a multi-media producer for MSNBC; an Assistant Picture Editor at the Chicago Tribune, and for the Chicago and Washington, D.C. bureaus of The Associated Press. She was a photo editor on an independent project, Chicago In The Year 2000 (CITY2000), which chronicled, a year in the life of the city of Chicago through the work of 200 photographers. She is Vice President of the Board of Directors of Blue Earth Alliance; a Seattle organization that supports photographic projects that educate the public about endangered cultures, threatened environments, and current social concerns.
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Chris Wilkins: Judge
Chris Wilkins is a photo editor for the Dallas Morning News, working with the Sports and Business sections on photography presentation. Previously, he worked for ten years as a photographer and bureau manager for Agence France Presse, based in Washington D.C., and Chicago, followed by five years as the foreign/national picture editor at the Chicago Tribune.
He has covered numerous top news and sports events over the past 19 years in his role as photographer and editor, most recently covering his seventh Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. He was also an editor on Dallas Morning News coverage of the Iraq War by photographers David Leeson and Cheryl Diaz Meyer, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography.