H₂O

Water, water, everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink.

Rime of the Ancient Mariner- Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Juror's Statement:

This was an enjoyable and enlightening experience and I congratulate all the photographers on their work and interest in the subject, water. The range of work technically was very broad as was the interpretation. The exception to this was that few images addressed social or environmental concerns, which are so central to how we actually use water. I was also surprised to find little reflecting water’s central position in agriculture and our food. A few photographers illustrated the human relationship to water — our elemental reliance on water for life, utility and beauty.

In my choices for the exhibition there are examples of most genres of photos that have water as a main element, and I have tried to honor those that neared perfection and pushed the ideas, although not new, toward a finer edge. I celebrate new angles of view and a deeper use of the multiple meanings found in the qualities of water to refract, reflect, obscure, magnify, distort and iridesce. I paid no attention to technique in the final picks — HDR, triptych, super long exposure, color work in the “darkroom,” and fine black and white composition — but I tried to downplay the many obvious cliches among the entries. There is wonder and magic in “the rapture of the shallows,” but I feel the most important thing for us to understand and communicate when we can is how dependent we are on water, how precious and necessary it is in its purity, and how commonly it is abused and wasted. 

Gary Braasch 

Juror: Gary Braasch 

Gary Braasch is an environmental photojournalist and writer who documents nature, environment, biodiversity and climate change around the world. He has been a nature photographer for more than 40 years, and is internationally known for dramatic, artistic and science-based nature photography. His images and assignment articles have been published by Time, LIFE, New York Times Magazine, Discover, Smithsonian, National Geographic, Scientific American and the United Nations among many others.

In photographic assignments he specializes in recording the essence of whole ecosystems and threats to their biodiversity, employing techniques from aerial photography to extreme close-ups and underwater shots. His work has won
awards from Communication Arts and New York Art Directors Club and his was the lead portfolio in a major collection of current photojournalism, What Matters (Sterling Press, 2008) along with work by Sebastiao Salgado, James Natchwey, Ed Kashi and others.

Most of his work is on conservation or natural history subjects, the coverage of which gained Gary the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club in the U.S., and the Outstanding Nature Photographer citation from the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA). He was a founding Board Member of NANPA and a founding Fellow of the International League of Conservation
Photographers.

Gary's comprehensive book Earth Under Fire: How Global Warming is Changing the World (University of California Press) was first published in 2007 and has been updated in a paperback edition and made into an e-book (2009-2010). Praise for this book has come from Al Gore, members of the Nobel Prize winning scientific community of the world, Vanity Fair, Nature, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Bill McKibben and Paul Hawken.

He received the Ansel Adams Award from the Sierra Club and the Outstanding Nature Photographer citation from the North American Nature Photography Association. In 2010 he was named as one of the Forty Most Influential Nature Photographers by Outdoor Photography magazine.