Each portrait Kristi Elias creates is a unique work of art that is relevant and appropriate to its subject. Last year, Elias won a Sunset Print Award at the Professional Photographers of California state competition for You Won’t Bully Me, a grungy portrait of a young martial arts competitor.

It’s a tried and true saying – do what you love and do it well – and Robert A. Howard, owner of Howard Studios in Lebanon, Pa., embodies it. He photographs it all – from portraiture to commercial advertising photography – and then some.

One of the great ironies of photography is that you can turn a certain weakness in the original capture into a strength that sets the tone and separates it from the usual. Such is the case with Bob Klein’s LexJet Sunset Award-winning image at the Photo NorthEast competition called Walking the Lonely Street, which was captured in a village near Vienna. The image has just the right elements that evoke an Old World scene. Or, as Klein puts it, “You can project yourself walking down the street in this scene.” Perhaps that’s what caught the judges’ eyes, but much of the beauty of portrait – aside from the framing of the street, the lone figure with an umbrella slightly off center walking away from the camera and the way the buildings come to a satisfying point on the horizon – is in its weakness. Klein explains, “It was overcast with poor light and light rain, but I loved the way it looked. At the time I considered it unfortunate, but in retrospect it was fortunate. That camera I used...