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The votes from the first installment of the Monthly Image Competition are in, and a Best of Show tie was indicative of the high level of photography entered in the Summer Competition. Check out the rest of the winners by clicking on the photos above or visit the UPAA MIC Page.

Digital Asset Management is a phrase that always seems to evoke the emotion of its acronym. Whether at a large university or a small community college, we are all challenged with the daunting task of organizing our large photo collections and sharing them with those who need access to them. Mike Ekern, of the University of St. Thomas, came up with the idea for a series of articles on the different DAM systems used by our membership. Hopefully this proves to be a useful resource to the UPAA membership who are struggling to create their own management system. Here is Matt Cashore's review of Photoshelter.com:

Although I've worked for Notre Dame in some capacity going back to my student days 20 years ago, I wasn't hired as an official employee until June 2007.  One of the very first things I did was open a Photoshelter account.  I still rank that as my single best decision of the last six years.

At that time my department had no Digital Asset Management solution to speak of.  Some photos were on Flickr, some were on a home-brew server, and there were a couple of external hard drives of images, but most floated amongst the designers and art directors on physical media.  I needed a low-maintenance searchable archive and distribution network & I needed it right away.  (Oh and if we could sell stuff, that would be great, too.)

LineCamp2013 from Baylor University on Vimeo.

Baylor's Matthew Minnard and Robbie Rogers are at it again with a video highlighting the Baylor Line Camp, which is easily one of the most involved freshman orientation programs in the country. I checked in with Matthew to get some more information on the creation of the video:

"We primarily used 5DMKIIIs...mostly hand-held. This actually was the first time we used a Glide-Cam for many of the shots. This was the first time we've done a video or any multimedia on Line Camp, so we wanted to produce an overall piece to show the excitement and energy that happens during this event which is always held in the middle of the summer. The intro to the video was created through using a template in Motion and dropped into the overall FCP project."

You can see more of Robbie and Matthew’s work on the Baylor Facebook Page, The Baylor Proud Blog, Current Students Site, Baylor Photo on Tumblr and of course at Baylor Photography.

At the 2013 UPAA Symposium, Wake Forest's Ken Bennett was named one of the UPAA's Master of the Profession, our organization's highest honor. The Winston-Salem Journal recently wrote a great profile piece on Ken and his recent accolades. Check it out at journalnow.com.

Wake Forest University also did a release on Ken's award, which you can see at inside.wfu.edu

If you would like to see more of Ken's work, visit Wake Forest's photoblog appropriately named Focus on the Forest.

The results are in for the 2013 Multimedia Competition. Here are the winners:

Honorable Mention - Baylor University - A Social Gathering

3rd place - University of Notre Dame - Silent Stone Houses

2nd place - University of Georgia - Georgia Fishes Field Study

1st place - Brigham Young University - BYU Mathletes Recalculated

Here are the winners of the 2013 Print Competition. You can see a gallery of the winning images at upaa.org:

Sports Features
Honorable Mention – Mark Philbrick, BYU
Honorable Mention – Matt Cashore, Notre Dame
3rd Place – Matt Yeoman, Ferris State
2nd Place – Andrew Tucker, University of Georgia
1st Place – Eric Bronson, University of Michigan

Sports Action
Honorable Mention – Martin Vloet, University of Michigan
Honorable Mention – Eric Bronson, University of Michigan
3rd Place – Jaren Wilkey, BYU
2nd Place – Justin Hayworth, Grinnell College
1st Place – Trice Megginson, University of Wyoming

People and Portraits
Honorable Mention (tie) - Nancy Evelyn, University of Georgia
Honorable Mention (tie) - Nancy Evelyn, University of Georgia
Honorable Mention – Todd Paris, University of Alaska
3rd Place – Jim Stroup, Virginia Tech
2nd Place (tie) - Ken Bennett, Wake Forest
2nd Place (tie) - Jaren Wilkey, BYU
1st Place – Jeff Etheridge, Auburn University

Science and Research
Honorable Mention – Caroline Summers, Samford University
Honorable Mention – Jim Stroup, Virginia Tech
3rd Place – Eric Bronson, University of Michigan
2nd Place – Jeff Sabo, Miami University
1st Place – Jaren Wilkey, BYU

Campus Environment
Honorable Mention – George Hartmann, Western Illinois
Honorable Mention – Matt Cashore, Notre Dame
3rd Place – Ken Bennett, Wake Forest
2nd Place – Matt Cashore, Notre Dame
1st Place – Robert Jordan, University of Mississippi

By Jaren Wilkey, Jon Hardy and Marcos Escalona/BYU Photo

It wasn’t that long ago that I would spend a long day on Saturday shooting a BYU football game, go back to the office and set the 20 or so rolls of exposed film on the counter and go home. On Monday I would send the rolls into a lab to get processed, and I wouldn’t get the first look at the slides until Wednesday or Thursday. It may have been a simpler time, but it is also ancient history. Now whenever a great play happens on the field I instantly have somebody in my ear asking me if I got the play (of course I did) and how soon they could get it to post on the Football Team's Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/Pinterest account (ok, maybe not the last one). In this new era dominated by social media, time is a luxury we can't afford. The sooner that you can get your photos out into those social media channels, the better usage you will get out of them.

In 2011 the Super Bowl had 3.1 million social media interactions, that is 3.1 million people said something about the game on a social media network while the game was going on. In 2012 the number jumped to 17.4 million. This year, that number skyrocketed to 52.5 million. (Source: Trendrr) 27.7 million comments were posted about the game on Twitter, and only 2.8 million were posted on Facebook (Source: Bluefin Labs) 88% of the social media chatter was uploaded via mobile devices; presumably people interacting with their tablet or phone while watching the game.

The winners from the April Monthly Image Competition are up, check them out on the MIC Website.

Our president is being featured over on Calumet's blog this morning, check out the post Glenn Carpenter's Photo of the Week which is about a star trail photo he created with the Triggertrap app and StarStax software. You can learn more about this technique in Robert Jordan's article Doorknob To The Universe.

Mike Ekern always has the coolest stuff to share with us. This time it is a crazy video of the Red Bull Crashed Ice competition. Learn more about it at The University of St. Thomas.

We're really excited to announce that Peter Read Miller will be one of our featured speakers at the 2013 UPAA Symposium. He'll be speaking to us on Thursday June 20th from 2:45-5:30 at the Elgin Community College Business Conference Center. Check out the symposium page for his bio or check out his portfolio at www.PeterReadMiller.com.

By Glenn Carpenter, UPAA President

Congratulations to Dawn Van Hall on receiving the 2012-13 Excellence in Professional Service Award from SUNY Cortland. I have known for a very long time that Dawn deserves this recognition because of her service on the Board, service as committee chair, and for her famous chocolate-chip cookies. Dawn has given of herself in order that UPAA, SUNY Cortland, and others may excel.

From the Cortland Website:

A long-time member of the College’s Center for Gender and Intercultural Studies (CGIS), Van Hall organizes and presents a Native American History Month film series in November on behalf of the center. Over the years, the digital-film acquisitions have formed the basis of a very complete collection representing the diverse lives of American Indians as well as Canadian First Peoples and Maori people.

The annual screenings, often accompanied by discussions with visiting filmmakers or cultural presenters, are awaited eagerly by a loyal following of students, staff and visitors.

“I don’t know (Van Hall’s) secret ingenuity of pulling together an impressive program and asking for only nominal support from CGIS,” the nominator wrote. “I can only imagine that she is well-known for her efforts, and that filmmakers happily comply with her request and give us an opportunity to ask about the making of the film, the cultural settings, etc.”

The March winners have been posted for the Monthly Image Competition. Check out all the winners on the MIC Site.

By Nick Romanenko, Rutgers University

The hospitality room at the Miami Inn, Oxford Ohio, not in the southern climes of sunny Florida, was packed following the banquet that closed out another annual UPAA symposium. I was tending bar, making sure the guests were well tended to as they spent the waning hours of Friday night catching up with friends they probably wouldn’t see face to face for another year. Brigham Young University senior photographer Mark Philbrick had just captured his seventh Photographer of the Year award earlier in the evening, and was being approached with congratulations from colleagues as he made his way across the room.

By the time I saw Mark I was struck by the glazed look of euphoria on his face. He was obviously very happy, stunned, buzzed. Perhaps the reality of the moment was still sinking in, but then there’s no one else who has had his experience with this kind of moment in the thirty plus years he’d been a university photographer. He had won six times before, twice the number of any other photographer.

Aperture Magazine has joined the UPAA family and will be sponsoring an award for the Annual Print Competition (APC). Aperture Magazine will award a subscription to the photographer who has the highest scoring print in the Personal Vision category of the APC.

Created in 1952 by photographers and writers as “common ground for the advancement of photography,” Aperture today is a multiplatform publisher and center for the photo community. In addition to publishing a quarterly magazine, Aperture also produces between twelve and fifteen new photobooks and books about photography each year. They also publish e-books, apps, and a daily blog, as well as online features on their website.

We are very excited about this relationship with one of the most prestigious photo magazines in the world. Members attending the Symposium in June will receive a copy of the latest issue of Aperture Magazine.