Michael and Tina Timmons are Sunset Print Award regulars, in one way or another. Both are past Sunset Print Award-winners for their outstanding photography, but have also printed award-winning images for other photographers across the country.

This Sunset Print Award-winning photo from the New Hampshire PPA print competition, entitled Firehole River, almost didn’t happen. The photographer, Jeff Dachowski – a former Sunset Print Award winner, decorated photographer and PPA judge – had pneumonia when he captured this scene in Yellowstone National Park at Firehole River.

As noted in an earlier post here at the LexJet Blog, there’s a new photo paper in town, and its name is Sunset Photo Canvas Paper 230g.

Master photographer Gary Meek, owner of Gary’s Studio of Photography in Hot Springs, Ark., says that Ansel Adams’ concept of “pre-visualization” is one of the most important aspects of photography. Gary and his wife, Kathryn, also a Master photographer, were traveling through Florence in October of last year when they came upon the scene shown here.

As you can tell from recent posts at the LexJet Blog, print shops, artists and photographers are finding creative ways to use the versatile LexJet Print-N-Stick Fabric. At Elizabeth’s Art Gallery in Goderich, Ontario, Canada, its most recent photo exhibition, DPI 2014, features Print-N-Stick Fabric.

Award-winning prints are subject to any number of objective criteria, such as composition and color balance, but there is often a subtle and subjective emotional element that resonates with the judges, even if they can’t quite put their finger on the story behind that emotional element. For the Sunset Print Award winner at the Professional Photographers Association of Massachusetts (PPAM) convention, Cathy Broderick, her award-winning print, entitled A Slow Decline, had great emotional significance. Broderick, who owns Cathleen Broderick Photography in Whitman, Mass., captured this wilting flower in her studio while her mother was in the hospital with a terminal illness. “I had been fooling around with flowers in the studio before my mother went into the hospital, trying to come up with something apart from my usual portraiture. When she got sick I left the studio and forgot about them,” recalls Broderick. “A few days later I came back to the studio to take care of some details in...

An expert portrait photographer – primarily weddings and seniors – Amy Feick won a Sunset Print Award at the PPA Northeast District competition for an image outside her expertise.

Each year the Antonelli Institute of Graphic Design & Photography holds a huge student photography competition. This year, second-year student Lauren Driscoll walked away with a Sunset Print Award for her lemony-fresh commercial product shot entitled, well, Lemon Fresh.

Fonthill Castle in Doylestown, Pa., lends itself to photography because it’s a piece of artwork in and of itself. Built by Henry Chapman Mercer between 1908 and 1912, Fonthill Castle is built almost entirely of stone, cement and tiles, including artistic tiles with intricate designs and font work (thus Fonthill).

One of the great things about photography is the Eureka! moment when all the pieces fall into place for the perfect scene. Modern digital photography allows us to manipulate and create that moment in the processing stage, but when it happens naturally, there’s something special about it.