St. Louis Public Radio invites all Metro area teens with an interest in photography to enter the 2024 STLPR Teen Photojournalist Prize.
The contest is now accepting submissions for its fourth year and is open to all high-school aged students in the STLPR listening areas.
A growing regional competition
Each year, STLPR appeals to local schools and youth organizations to encourage high-school age teens to apply for the Teen Photojournalism Prize, and the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
For the 2023 competition, judges considered more than 350 student entries from 62 schools in the St. Louis area.
"We had a record-number of students from across the St. Louis, Quincy, and Rolla regions showcase their communities last year," said Brian Munoz, interim Digital Editor at St. Louis Public Radio. "While the competition was fierce, these high school students continue to show us there are important and meaningful stories to share from their backyards. Our staff always walks away inspired after working with these emerging visual storytellers year after year."
For teens entering the competition, the STLPR Teen Photojournalist Prize offers cash prizes, the opportunity to have their work exhibited, and a pathway to early professional recognition, publicity, encouragement, hands-on training, and resources to further their natural skills and career goals.
The 2024 Contest
Students entering the contest will submit an original photograph made between Tuesday, April 11, 2023, and Monday, April 8, 2024. The deadline for submission in this year’s contest is Monday, April 8, 2024 at 11:59 p.m.
Judges will review entries for a Best in Show prize and seven First Place photo prizes in the following categories:
- General News
- Feature
- Sports Action
- Sports Feature
- Portrait
- Landscape
- Animals and wildlife
Entries should include a title, caption, and a personal reflection statement from the photographer. No more than 3 photo entries are allowed per person for the entire contest. Please see the contest home page for complete rules and entry form.
Contest Prizes
Contest awards include an $800 Best in Show prize and seven $200 First Place prizes for each of the photo categories. Honorees will have an opportunity to:
- Participate in a photography master class for all of the Prize winners with a team of professional photojournalists
- See their images published on stlpr.org and on St. Louis Public Radio’s social media channels
- Have their work displayed on the Public Media Commons and at a public gallery exhibition at UMSL at Grand Center
- Grand Prize and category winners will receive a framed print of their winning photograph
Students and their winning images will be honored at the opening night of the 2024 STLPR Teen Photojournalist Prize gallery exhibit at St. Louis Public Radio on Wednesday, May 14 at 7 p.m.
The Judges
This year’s entries will be judged by a panel of award-winning local photojournalists and visual storytellers, including:
- Eric Lee, Staff Photojournalist at St. Louis Public Radio. Lee’s personal projects center around identity, community, and resilience. His work has appeared in The Atlantic, Bloomberg, National Geographic, New York Magazine, NPR, Washington Post, and other publications. He is the photographer for the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Investigations winning series, "Capital Assets" by the Wall Street Journal. A native New Yorker, Eric earned his B.A. in film studies at Gettysburg College in 2015 and M.A. in new media photojournalism at the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design at George Washington University in 2020.
- Cristina Fletes-Mach, Visual Communications Specialist at St. Louis Public Radio. Fletes-Mach previously worked as a videographer for Saint Louis University and St. Louis County and is a former Staff Photographer / Videographer at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. She was part of the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Breaking News Photography awarded to the photography staff at the Post-Dispatch for their coverage of the unrest in Ferguson, Mo.
- Whitney Curtis, Senior Photographer and Videographer at Washington University in St. Louis. Before joining WashU, Curtis’s clients as an independent photojournalist included The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, ProPublica and Politico. Additionally, she worked as a staff photographer at newspapers in the Midwest and Mountain West. Her work has appeared in group exhibitions at the United Nations Visitor Centre, the International Criminal Court in The Hague and the Monroe Gallery of Photography.
- Brian Munoz, interim Digital Editor at St. Louis Public Radio. Munoz most recently worked at USA TODAY as a visual storyteller and editor focusing on politics and sports, including the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. His work has appeared in publications such as The New York Times, The Washington Post, NPR, and The Atlantic. Munoz's journalism — both written and visual — has been recognized by state and national organizations, including being named one of Current’s 2023 Rising Stars in public media.
- Brian Heffernan, interim News Director at St. Louis Public Radio. Before coming to the newsroom in April 2018, Heffernan worked as a reporter and photojournalist for a variety of publications including Al Jazeera America, BBC, St. Louis Magazine, Riverfront Times, San Francisco magazine and the Island Packet and Beaufort Gazette newspapers in South Carolina.
For a look at previous year’s winners or for more information on the contest, visit stlpr.org/prize.
