Andrew D. Brosig, editor of The Torrington Telegram, The Lingle Guide and The Business Farmer, won the Wyoming Press Association’s top picture honors among small weekly papers for 2017 with the shot above.
Brosig set out last May to document Goshen County elementary schools’ end-of-the-school-year parties. At Trail Elementary School he found children playing on a Slip ’N Slide-like water-soaked plastic sheet and photographic gold.
School kids were spraying water on the slide and a garden hose and perforated PVC pipe formed a water fountain at one end. Brosig began shooting from the side before moving to the end of the slide where he set up with a 70-200mm zoom lens.
It was a bright, sunny day but still morning. The sun wasn’t yet high enough to cast the harsh, vertical light that bedevils shooters.
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At first, the water drops confused the camera’s autofocus, Brosig said, and rendered the sliding children out of focus. He switched to manual focus, stopped down the lens aperture to ensure he would get his subject’s face sharp, and held-to a fast-enough shutter speed to freeze the action and make a correct exposure.
Then along came third-grader Kaden Adams, 9, in a headlong dive. Brosig used the photograph as the lead in a two-page photo-story spread in the 2,000-circulation Telegram.
“Just the look on this little guy’s face was priceless,” Brosig said.