When New Orleans photographer Yvette Ponthier first learned about print competitions, she was initially turned off by what seemed to be subjective judging and nitpicking. “I saw these beautiful images just being picked apart,” she says. “So I said, nope, not doing that. That was the biggest mistake I ever made.”

By all accounts, Jeff Gulle should have been a doctor. But one of his sisters, who was also studying medicine, convinced him to follow his passion … and that’s what eventually led him to the world of photography. He started working on the yearbook and newspaper staff in school, and kicked off a career in photojournalism.

When comparing photographer Ken Stoecklin’s studio work to his print competition work, a viewer may be surprised to learn that they come from the same lens. The modern family portraits, energetic senior pictures and sweet wedding images are quite the contrast to his dark, controversial competition work, such as the 2015 Sunset Award Winning “The Evil That Men Do” print, pictured above, from the Wyoming Professional Photographers Association competition, and last year’s edgy Sunset winner, “The Decay of Man.”

It’s not hard to tell where master photographer Kelly Schulze’s heart resides … she signs off email correspondence with a “Peace, Purrs, and Tail Wags,” and she owns Mountain Dog Photography in Monkton, Vermont. Yes, she loves all things furry or scaly, and has dedicated her business to capturing their personalities in portraits. Case in point: Ivory, the albino rabbit she photographed at the Humane Society of Chittenden County, where she has volunteered her photography skills for several years. Ivory’s red eyes and bright pink skin were shot against a blue background, which Schulze says may have seemed “creepy” to some viewers. At a friend’s suggestion, she changed the image to black-and-white and suddenly had an award winner on her hands. She won the Sunset Print Award at the Vermont Professional Photographers competition for this image, titled Hare Apparent. “I’ve always been into animals, and I started photography as a kid,” she says. “After college, I figured out how to put...

You may not think that an accounting, finance and human resources professional would be inclined to turn out gorgeous photography like the winning image, WaterCourse, pictured at left. But maybe you haven’t met photographer Jamie Steeno yet.

Sometimes the most dramatic photographs can be made in the blink of an eye. When North Carolina portrait, landscape and architectural photographer Gordon Kreplin toured a local Parade of Homes event, he set up a few lights and took one shot while the hallway was clear. That one shot, named “Upstairs Downstairs,” won Kreplin the 2015 Virginia Professional Photographers Association‘s print competition. “I probably shot 15 houses that day, and this was the last one,” Kreplin says. “I loved the composition and entry into the rooms as well as the architectural lines.” To evolve the photo from a straight-forward architectural shot to something a bit more moody, he created a faux high-dynamic range (HDR) in Photoshop. He printed the image on Sunset Fibre Elite, available from LexJet, and mounted it on a 16-x-20-inch black gator board. “I don’t typically finish the print at all by putting a lacquer on it,” he says. “It can make it look milky in the light and it dulls the blacks.” A concert...

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.

“I like surrealism,” says Elaine Hughes. That much is evident in Hughes’ Sunset Print Award-winning piece entitled Chaotic Profiling. Hughes also won a Sunset Print Award in 2013 for the surreal and aptly titled Dream World.

For the second year in a row, Tracye Gibson, M. Photog., won a Sunset Print Award for her artistic flair and masterful use of Photoshop and Corel Painter.

For the second year in a row, Tracye Gibson, M. Photog., won a Sunset Print Award for her artistic flair and masterful use of Photoshop and Corel Painter.