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1st Place Winner: Jon Orlando Lyons, CO

Sometimes when it snows in Boulder, Colorado, the air is thick with white like the furious flurries of a just churned snow globe. However, as Jon Orlando and his girlfriend, Candice, were hiking last winter, it was a gentle fall -- the kind that tickles cheeks and catches on eyelashes. Jon, who keeps his digital SLR at hand, froze this moment with a click. "I always try to get a strong expression," he says. "Here the eye draws you in. You want to know, 'What is she thinking?'"

Many of Jon's memories, like this one, are captured in his photography. One that isn't -- but is just as vivid to him -- is the first time he held a camera as a kid. He says, "I picked one up and knew that's what I wanted to do." He studied photography at Northern Arizona University and is now in the process of starting his own photography business. His describes his work as an effort "to invite intimacy and find truth in that single moment when the shutter clicks." Visit jonorlandophoto.com for more information.

Travel

1st Place Winner: David Michael Cincinnati, OH

The best opera singers can hold an audience captive. Language is not an obstacle nor is time. There is just the music, the voice, the moment, and -- if the performer is truly a master -- the feeling of being transported.

David Michael knows this well. He is a professional opera singer and was in Italy appearing as Porgy in Porgy and Bess when he took this shot. He says, "I was in Venice, turned around, saw this angle and this view, and knew I had to get it." The image captures centuries-old buildings and the midday canal traffic: steadfastness and hustle-bustle in one frame. Without even the slightest lift of voice, David has created the photographic equivalent of operatic escape.

Although he has been only seriously shooting for less than two years, he says, "Once I get interested in something, I get a little intense about it." He used his digital SLR in Venice and continues to take landscapes and portraits, his primary focus. It was his first time entering the competition.

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