See the winning shots of the Highland Outdoors Photo Contest 📸
Aug 03, 2021 1:34 am
The results are in! Enjoy the winning shots of the inaugural Highland Outdoors Photo Contest
Happy August! We are most excited to announce the winners of our first-ever photo contest. This initial contest was open exclusively to email newsletter subscribers, which is all of you fine folks! We had no idea what to expect and were thrilled with the results: 10 photogs sent in 22 photos across our three categories: landscape, wildlife, and adventure. The contest served as a great dry run, and we look forward to building a bigger and better photo contest in the near future. We hope this contest inspires you all to get out and keep shooting photos of our wild and wonderful state. We published a full feature of the contest on our website, check it out here!
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Grand Prize Winner: David S. Johnston
David's photo of the full moon rising through the Gunsight Notch at Seneca Rocks is our overall winner. You can read about the mind-bending mathematical work that Johnson went through to get this series of shots in our article about highlining at Seneca. Congrats on the killer shot, David!
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Landscape Winner: Christina Petrilli
Christina's capture of an early winter storm on the slopes at Snowshoe takes first prize for the landscape category. As an avid skier who is always ready for summer to be over, this one instantly stoked my excitement winter. Think snow, Christina!
Runner Up: Jake Lloyd
Jake's snap of some golden hour light illuminating the needles of pine precariously perched over the New River Gorge does a great job of capturing the fleeting feeling of being a thousand feet above one of the oldest rivers on Earth. Nice work, Jake!
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Wildlife Winner: Jill Mullins
What else can you say about this photo besides one word: fierce! This capture of a hulking beast is not your average bear, and the shot stole the show the second we saw it. Those red eyes, though! Congrats, Jill.
Runner Up: Sheila Jenkins
This pastoral photo of a dozing fawn was the perfect counterpoint to Jill's big bear. We're lucky to have so many excellent wildlife models here in the Mountain State. Congrats, Sheila!
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Adventure Winner: Tanner Hensen
Tanner's shot of a climber bouldering at Cooper's Rock State Forest on the rim of the Cheat Canyon is adventure at its core. Solitude, scenery, danger, stillness, and motion all came together in this great snap. Nice work, Tanner!
Runner Up: Jill Mullins
Jill claims another win with this awesome evening tableau of whitewater rafting on the Lower New River. This is the final pool before the exciting Fayette Station Rapid (visible in the distance) and is the culmination of one of the best whitewater runs in the East. We love how those purples in the sky play against the bright colors of the flotilla.
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Can't find a copy of the print mag? Subscribe and get it directly to your doorstep - guaranteed!
We've had several folks ask us recently where they can grab a copy because many of our free distribution locations are fresh out of mags. Well, do we have good news for you. You can subscribe to the print magazine and be guaranteed a copy, all without having to go hunt it down. Even better - your support helps us continue creating Highland Outdoors.
By the way, we just got our 100th subscriber! I'd like to give a huge shout out to Karen Kunz in Morgantown for supporting independent outdoor adventure journalism. Karen was my favorite professor during my grad school days who became a great mentor and a great friend over the years. Thanks, Karen!
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Have you seen these yet?
Check out the full feature of the photo contest on our website. You know you want to!
Howlin' Hardpack: Fayetteville's Wolf Creek Trails
This is the story not only of one of the state's best new mountain bike trail systems, but of how local folks can come together to get things done.
After a year off during the pandemic, the Gravel Race up Spruce Knob (GRUSK) triumphantly returned to the summit of the state's highest peak. We were proud sponsors of this event and get our arses handed to us on the 50-mile race course.
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Stay tuned for our next installment, coming straight to your inbox when the goldenrod starts blooming!
Enjoy, and thanks for reading #westvirginiasoutdoormagazine!
Dylan Jones
Editor-in-Chief
Highland-Outdoors.com