A bronze for travel photography

Over the weekend the Society of American Travel Writers announced the 2009 Lowell Thomas Awards for the best writing and photography from the past year. I was pleased to discover one of my colleagues had entered photos from a piece I wrote about Palmquist Farm in north-central Wisconsin. I won a bronze in the newspaper photography category. The contest was judged by the faculty at the University of North Carolina journalism school, here are the comments:

Bronze: Chris Welsch, “Down on the Farm,” Star Tribune, Minneapolis

This magnificent lead photo of the blurred skier subtly but effectively makes me linger on the page and the image. Bravo to the art director, too. Mood and sense of scene are so memorable.

Shooting for the NY Times at the Metrodome

I haven't written about Sports since I covered women's soccer at the Junior Olympics in Minnesota in 1988 (or something like that) and I haven't shot it since college. But happenstance and coincidence, the great friends of the freelance, delivered an assignment from the New York Times Sports page to shoot the switchover of the Metrodome from football field to baseball diamond in 12 hours. (The Vikings beat the Packers on Monday Night Football, and the Twins have a sudden death playoff with the Tigers today). I was at the Dome until nearly 2 a.m., and I was up editing and writing captions until 4 a.m. A fun night.