There’s a strange truth in the media; we all die an “award-winning journalist.”
And contest time, an honored tradition, is a seasonal ritual that rolls around at the end of every year. Journalists of all shapes and media sizes take stock of the work they’ve done. I don’t enter many contests anymore, but muscle memory compels me to revisit this rear-view habit.
In the news business, where the distance between today and yesterday could be a thousand miles, these “call for entries” make us pause the “now” to peek over our shoulder at the past year. I get a second chance to explore the reasons a particular image ran when another did not. A chance to ask what went right, what went wrong, or would I cover the event the same way again.
And then, there’s a moment when you’re looking at an image you’d forgotten about and reconnect, if only in memory, with the families or individual staring back at you.
The photo above is not a trophy winner. It’s 7-year-old Dounya Eskaf, of Lincoln, chasing down bubbles in front of a stalled Memorial Day color guard. It was just one subtle, sweet distraction from news coverage that never found a home in The Journal or its website.
When I look at a year’s work through a retrospective lens, what I do – what we do – isn’t about some contest, award or plaque, it’s about the faces in the photos. It’s about the experiences I’ve had over the past year and the people I’ve had the honor to meet, and even though I know most of those photos would never earn awards, they certainly feel like winners to me….
copyright 2015 Kris Craig / The Providence Journal / 2 Much Time design
Kris Craig 
Your connection to the faces and people you photograph is in delightful synchronicity to Dounya’s catching the soap bubble.