You don’t have to be a cat lover to enjoy this portrait of William the cat by Sherie Dowsett. This striking close-up of William won the LexJet Sunset Award for Outstanding Print & Presentation at the Plymouth Center for the Arts competition in February.

One of the “secrets” of a great portrait photo is bringing out the character of the subject. But what if the subject is a character? All the better, as you can see from this recent winner of the LexJet Sunset Award at the Georgia PPA print competition. Entitled Watching and Waiting, pro photographer Jeff Gulle was commissioned to produce publicity photos for a ghost town-themed amusement park near Maggie Valley, N.C. called Ghost Town in the Sky. With a group of students in tow from North Georgia Technical College in Clarksville, Ga., where Gulle teaches, this particular image was fittingly captured at high noon. The problem with high noon is the lighting, so Gulle and his students waiting patiently for clouds to pass over and lit the Preacher from the right to ensure an image with depth. “I love having the students with me. It elevates my photography since I need to explain everything that goes into the capture: picking locations, lighting, posing, and so forth,” says Gulle. “I...

Burma, aka Myanmar, is long way from Rochester, N.Y., home of Dick Bennett Photography, but Bennett struck photography gold there recently. Bennett was awarded a LexJet Sunset Award at the Photo North East competition for the image he captured during a trip with a group of photographers last November and December to Burma’s Shan Plateau. It was the only image out of about a thousand in the competition to score 100. Though it’s somewhat monochromatic, the shades of golden hues that permeate the image, along with the perfection of its composition, were elements that obviously impressed the judges. “It gets very warm in the afternoon and cold at night, creating a real nice mist in the morning. We got up for each of the sunrises, and one day about half an hour after sunrise I saw a hut on stilts with a pyramid shaped roof,” recalls Bennett. “It was a real golden hour for the light. It lasted about a minute and a half and when the person in the hut moved into the perfect position I took...

Elaine and Robert Hughes made a dramatic shift in their photography and art about five years ago. Highly decorated and certified professional photographers who used to specialize in high-end wedding photography, the pair now specializes in creating surreal digital artwork. The pair’s work is an anticipated addition to the various competitions they’ve entered. This past year, Elaine Hughes won a LexJet Sunset Award at the PPA North East District competition for Illustrative Artist. The award-winning print, called Dream World, is a wildly colorful example of Elaine’s original art. “Lately I’ve developed a series connected with water and dreams. It’s chaotic, disconnected and fun, with symbolism you can’t really put your finger on, like in your dreams. I left it open to your own interpretation. The door, for instance, could be the girl’s next journey, your next journey, or you could go in and out of the dream through that door,” Elaine explains. Elaine says developing the art is quite...

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.

A bridge can be a metaphor for many things. For photographers, it’s about bridging the gap from capture to print.

Cheri MacCallum, owner of Art by Cheri, Idaho Falls, Idaho, is one of those talented few who have had the honor of winning a LexJet Sunset Award two years in a row.

One of the great things about being a photographer has to be the interesting people you meet along the way. For this LexJet Sunset Award-winning print at the recent North Carolina Professional Photographers Association print competition, Randy McNeilly met Bonnie and Clyde.

For the second year in a row Audrey Wancket’s classical portrait photography won a LexJet Sunset Award for Best Color Printed Image at the recent PPA Northcentral District competition. The winning portrait, called Sugar and Spice, is not an outlier; it is representative of the high-quality work Wancket produces daily for her clients. Situated on 11 acres and built into a barn, Wancket’s studio in Spring Grove, Ill., next to the Wisconsin border, also includes a two-acre wildflower garden perfect for outdoor sessions. The indoor sessions are where Wancket truly shines, bringing the ethos of outdoor lighting into the studio. “The key to my studio photography is the strength and direction of the light. Natural light comes from one side, and I turn the subjects’ faces slightly into that light,” explains Wancket. “And, it depends on who you’re photographing: you put the light on the side where you’re lighting less of their face and other people the broad side of their face, depending on...

It takes a special talent to uniquely reproduce a scene that’s been photographed thousands of times. Think Ansel Adams’ shot of the Grand Tetons. Now a scene that’s a staple of photographers of all abilities, it’s difficult to capture a unique perspective on that particular scene.