Fall CTM Photo Contest proves inspiring to students

If images are the lingua franca of our highly visual contemporary culture, then the winners of Skidmore?s fall 2007 Creative Thought Matters photo contest rate as especially eloquent speakers.

Among the five winners?each selected online by campus-community voters?are Andrew Noone ?11, whose untitled study of a music-making moment won him the People?s Choice Award. The handsome and nearly abstract black-and-white photo called Sine took first place for Mike Comite ?09. (Curious about how he got that shot? ?A weight was suspended by a spring from a track that ran across a table,? Comite explains. ?A strobe light was positioned to the left of the frame?.We used a 2.5-second exposure, and pushed the weight/spring across the track, tracing out a sine wave.?)

The Emotion by Korlarp Suwacharangkul ?10 took second place, a haunting full-face oil portrait framed at the end of a long row of Scribner Library stacks. Third place went to a turbulent, dramatic skyscape shot through the boldly framed skylights of the Tang Museum by Flip Bongaerts ?09. Crew captured both the Skidmore Crew women?s varsity team setting forth in the Head of the Fish Regatta and an honorable mention for Martha Valentine ?09.

Both a visual documentation and a celebration of the Skidmore experience, the CTM photo contests are open to students, faculty, and staff. This fall?s contest reached beyond campus to include photos of any Skidmore experience or event shot anywhere around the world, and ?the photos flooded in from Skidmore students, faculty, and staff in Africa, France, England, China, and back home in Saratoga Springs,? says contest coordinator Liz Katzman, webmaster in the College?s Office of Communications. The dozens of photos submitted last fall offer an abundance of inside glimpses of Skidmore in action and practice.

Contest honors include cash prizes for the top five winners and a ?wall of winners? outside the Communications office in Dana Hall that will display Noone?s and Comite?s photos, says Katzman. Many of the estimable photos that didn?t win official honors are likely to appear in the College?s various publications and its web site. Click here to view the winning photos. To see ?em all, click ? View Entries? in the site?s upper left. Word to the wise: See ?em all.
By Barbara Melville, Office of Communications