My story will finally get published…

I woke up to a great surprise a couple days ago with friends emailing and texting me that I had won first place at the World Press Photo, the premier photojournalism contest. I won in the category of Sports Action Story for my take on the Hawaiian Ironman World Championships, a story I shot over the course of about 15 hours on October 11, 2009. It was extra special to me because it was a feature that went mostly unpublished as it was a personal and self-imposed assignment that I had wanted to undertake after I had covered the race 9 years prior on assignment for Allsport. It was a completely self-funded endeavor with no guarantee that I was getting paid for it. I used all my frequent flyer miles to fly out my family and I on a vacation with our friend’s the Sage’s who have two girls the same age as our boys. We stayed at their timeshare which was a blast, and prepared for the race securing scubagear, helicopter, car rental and all other expenses out of pocket. Luckily a couple months later, a photo was picked up by Sports Illustrated (with Editor Jimmy Colton choosing it for one of SI’s Photos of the Year) and others ran in Triathlete Magazine and Inside Tri, publications based in San Diego near where I live, covering most of the costs of the trip. But the entire set never ran, so I was just so happy to see that it was chosen along side other great photos from photographers from all over the world, finally getting the chance to be viewed and published as a full story. And getting a trip to Amsterdam in May is a nice perk too!  You can see all of this years winners on the World Press Photo site at http://www.worldpressphoto.org/

You can check out the story here: