Mount Si photography students turned heads with their eye-catching works at the 2014 Washington State High School Photography Competition.
Twelve photos shot by 10 Mount Si High School students received recognition on Saturday, May 3.
Two Mount Si sophomores, Connor Jensen and Brendan Gregory, earned “Select Finalist” honors, named among the top 5 percent of photographers in a given category.
Jensen was praised for his abstract photo, while Gregory was lauded for his architecture photo.
Nine students earned “Select” honors at the competition, named within the top 15 percent of photographers.
These included Jensen, again, for his landscape photo; senior Zach Tidwell for two portrait photos; senior Rachel Mallasch for her camera phone image; senior Andrew Zinkan for his still-life; senior Kristin Moore for her animal shot; senior Wil Sanctis for his color photo; senior Emmitt Rudd for his abstract photo; freshman Scout Turner for her architecture shot; and freshman Samantha Holmes for her camera phone photo.
Judges viewed 4,100 photos submitted from 70 different schools in 12 categories.
Students can nominate their own photos to enter in the contest, and the Mount Si photography teacher, Jim Gibowski, also makes the selections to send to state, looking through thousands of files.
“In many ways, my students compete with each other in their photo assignments for my classes, because I believe in students critiquing their own and their classmates’ photography to help improve their own photography,” Gibowski said. “The state contest just takes this one step forward by getting more than 4,000 high school photos from around the state and judging them within only 12 categories.
“Hopefully, students realize it is easy to take a photo, but is quite difficult to take an excellent photograph,” Gibowski said. “Sometimes you get lucky and get a great shot, but usually you make your own luck. A good eye, experience, and often much work is usually the way it is done.”
Conner Jensen, abstract
Samantha Holmes, architechture
Scout Turner, architecture
Kristin Moore, animal
Brendan Gregory, Architecture
Andrew Zinkan, still life.