Lead Judge:  Dave LaBelle

Throughout his 50-year career, Dave LaBelle has been a photographer, editor, teacher, author and lecturer. 

LaBelle has worked for 20 newspapers and magazines in nine states, including the Anchorage Times, San Bernardino Sun-Telegram, Ventura County Star-Free Press, The Chanute Tribune, Ogden Standard-Examiner, The Sacramento Bee and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, where he was assistant managing editor for photography. 

His work has won numerous awards including National Press Photographers Association Region 10 Photographer of the Year three times, runnerup to W. Eugene Smith for the first Nikon World Understanding award in 1974 and runner-up for the NPPA National Photographer of the Year award in 1979.  He was awarded the International Understanding Through Photography award by the Photographic Society of America in 2002. 

LaBelle is also a master teacher whose students have gone on to win more than 10 Pulitzer Prizes.  Shortly after his time as Photographer at the Sacramento Bee, he turned his sights towards teaching as a compassionate storyteller and was a key member of the legendary team who built Western Kentucky University’s renowned Photojournalism program.  NPPA honored him with the Robin F. Garland Award for photojournalism education in 1991.  He also taught at University of Kentucky and was director of Kent State University’s Photojournalism program for many years. 

He is the author of 5 books including The Great Picture Hunt which is widely regarded by many as the cornerstone book for shooting features. 

Lessons in Death and Life is a sensitive, in-depth discussion about photographing grief and delicate issues.  His most recent book Bridges and Angels: The Story of Ruth is his first novel based on the disappearance of his mother in the 1969 Ventura County Floods.

LaBelle has served as judge for Pictures of the Year International, and the Pro Football Hall of Fame Photo Contest among many others. 

Renee C. Byer

Renée C. Byer is a photo and video journalist for The Sacramento Bee since 2003 whose work has focused on the disadvantaged. In 2007 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for feature photography for “A Mother’s Journey." She was also a Pulitzer Prize Finalist in 2013 for “A Grandfather’s Sorrow and Love,"and has received dozens of national and international honors, including the World Understanding Award from Pictures of the Year International. Byer was co-author and photographer for “Living on a Dollar a Day: The Lives and Faces of the World’s Poor,” a book, documentary and exhibition about people living on the brink of survival. Byer has traveled throughout North and South America, Africa, Asia and Europe. Her stories have focused on the California drought, climate change,

extreme poverty, women at war, domestic violence, the plight of Afghan Special Immigrant Visa holders as they face poverty and violence in the U.S., the shooting of an unarmed black man, Stephon Clark, and the aftermath of the Camp Fire, one of the deadliest wildfires in California history and the pandemic.

During her over 40 year career also as a photo editor and designer working at eight newspapers she mentored many successful photojournalists. She was the photo editor in 1996 on Stephanie Welsh's Feature Photography Pulitzer for her photographs of female genital mutilation in Kenya.

Renée’s work has been featured on CBS Sunday morning and been published worldwide. She has given two TEDx talks; one in Tokyo, Japan and the other in Sonoma, California. She has judged many international and national photojournalism contests most notably Days
Japan International Photojournalism awards ten times. Her work has been selected for projections and exhibitions at photo festivals and galleries nationally and internationally including Visa Pour L’Image in Perginan, France four times.

She lives with her husband Pulitzer Prize winning photographer Paul Kitagaki, Jr. and their three cats, Tiger Lily, Noir and Blueberry.
An extended Bio and list of awards and achievements can be found at: http:// www.reneecbyer.com/bio/

Mark Johnson

Mr. Johnson has been a visual storyteller since the late 1980s, working as a stringer for the Associated Press and Agence-France Presse. He has also spent time as a staff photographer at the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune and MetroWest Daily News, as an assistant chief photographer for Community Newspapers Company, photo editor of the Utica Observer-Dispatch and director of photography for SchoolSports Magazine and SchoolSports.com. He was a founding board member for the Intercollegiate Online News

Network, chairing their annual conference as well as being the chair of the NPPA’s Convergence conference. He currently serves as a non-voting board member for the Red and Black Publishing Company.

Mark E. Johnson teaches photojournalism, multimedia journalism, video journalism and graphic design courses, serves as the college’s Chief Technology Officer and is director of the National Press Photographers Association Best of Photojournalism competition. He directs the annual Woodall Weekend Workshop that takes advanced photojournalism students into rural Georgia counties to tell their stories as well as a fall workshop that has centered on motorsports photojournalism and the Georgia National Fair in the past. He developed the college’s first dedicated online news site and runs VisualJournalism.info.

Mr. Johnson is also a four-time Sports Car Club of America Road Rally Divisional champion, has served on the SCCA’s National RoadRally Board and is director of the SCCA Atlanta Region’s Road Rally program.

Josh Meltzer

Josh Meltzer joined the faculty in the School of Photographic Arts & Sciences at Rochester Institute of Technology in 2015 as an Assistant Professor where he teaches photojournalism and multimedia storytelling, including interactive storytelling. Before coming to RIT, he was first a Photojournalist-in- Residence and then an Assistant Professor teaching similar courses in the School of Journalism & Broadcasting at Western Kentucky University. A native of Athens, Georgia, Josh is a 1995 graduate of Carleton College in Minnesota and received his Masters in Multimedia Communications from the University of Miami in 2013.

In 2008, after 9 years as a staff photographer and multimedia journalist at The Roanoke Times in

Roanoke, Virginia, Josh accepted a Fulbright Scholarship to photograph and teach in Mexico where he began working on a project about the migration of indigenous families within Mexico. A selection of his work from his Fulbright year won the Grand Prize Professional Award from Photophilanthropy in 2010. He completed this project in 2014 as part of his Master’s Thesis while at the University of Miami.

He has been a co-coordinator and instructor with the Truth With A Camera workshops in Mexico, Ecuador and Bosnia and has served for several years on the staff of The Mountain Workshops since 2009.

His still and multimedia work has been recognized by the National Press Photographers Association’s (NPPA) Best of Photojournalism competition, where he was the 2006 Photojournalist of the Year for markets less than 115,000 circulation, Pictures of the Year International, which recognized a long-term project on those who care for the elderly with the Documentary of the Year award, KNPA, VNPA, Atlanta Photojournalism Competition, Northern and Southern Short Courses and the Society of Newspaper Design. He is also a recipient of the NPPA's Humanitarian Award in 2012 and is a 2014 recipient of the Carnegie Hero Award.

Jessica Phelps

Jessica Phelps is a photographer for the San Antonio Express-News. Before coming to Texas she worked for her hometown paper in Ohio. While in Ohio she won Pictures of the Year International, the NPPA's Best of Photojournalism contest for Small Market photographer and was Ohio Photographer of the Year 7 years in a row. Jessica's work focuses on intimate stories from the communities she covers.

Jessica came to her career in photojournalism after living overseas for 8 years after receiving her Bachelors in Media Studies from the Columbus College of Art and Design. Her travels shaped how she was able to see her hometown and with a new

perspective she was able to document her community.

Working at a small daily newspaper taught Jessica how important local journalism is and that stories can be found anywhere if you're willing to look.

Billy Weeks

William (Billy) Weeks has worked as a journalist for over 35 years. His career started with the Chattanooga Times in 1984 as a staff photographer. In 1995, he became the Photo Team Leader, and in 1999 he was named Director of Photography/Graphics at The Chattanooga Times Free Press and in 2010 he became an independent documentary photographer. Today when he is not teaching photojournalism at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, he is a contract photographer for many news organizations.

As a photojournalist, Weeks has covered assignments that range from the World Series to small villages in Central America and Asia. His photographs of poverty in Honduras were selected as an award of Excellence for editorial photography in the Communication Arts Photography Annual. Additionally, he has won the

Gordon Parks International Photography award twice and was a finalist ten times. He was awarded the Freedom of Information award from the Associated Press and many other awards for journalism. CNN and Photography District News featured his photographs on baseball in the Dominican Republic and Central America. His work has been exhibited at the New America Foundation in New York City, Hunter Museum of American Art, Art of Photography Show, Slow Exposures, South x Southeast, and several universities.

Weeks is a lecturer in photojournalism at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and adjunct instructor at Southern Adventists University. He has been a visiting speaker at many Universities and a presenter at several workshops for photojournalism. He believes that not only should journalists cover their assignment, but should also give something back to their profession. Today he lives in Ringgold, Georgia with his wife, two daughters, and a blind dog named Rosie.