Congratulations to Aurora Photos photographer, Logan Mock-Bunting, for winning 1st Place in the Sports Action category of the White House News Photographer’s Association Annual 2011 Eyes of History competition. Logan’s submission, a collection of 9 photographs, depicted a day in the life of freedivers taking part in spearfishing off the coast of North Carolina. To see Logan’s full submission visit the WHNPA Eyes of History 2011 page.

To view more of Logan Mock-Bunting’s work, visit Aurora Photos.

Ian Spanier/ Aurora Photos

Congratulations to Ian Spanier, photographer for Aurora Photos, who won 1st place in the “Travel Portraits” category of PDN’s World In Focus competition. To view PDN’s gallery of the World In Focus winners, click here. Congratulations again to Ian, and to all of this years winners!

To view more work from Ian Spanier, visit Aurora Photos.

Nick Hall/ Aurora Photos

Congratulations to Aurora photographers, Nick Hall and Ryan Heffernan! Both have been chosen as new and emerging photographers to watch for in PDN’s 30 2011 competition. You can check out their interviews and galleries by clicking here.

Ryan Heffernan/ Aurora Photos

To view more work from Nick Hall, visit Aurora Photos.

To view more work from Ryan Heffernan, visit Aurora Photos.

Congratulations to Blake Gordon, Aurora Select photographer, for his 2nd prize wining entry in the 68th Annual Pictures of The Year competition! Gordon’s, “With Traumatic Brain Injuries, Soldiers Face Battle For Care,” a piece done for NPR in June 2010, took second place in the ‘Issue Reporting Story-Multimedia’ category, documenting the story of Sgt. Victor Medina- an American soldier who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2009 while on a tour of duty in Iraq.

To see more work from Blake Gordon, visit his portfolio on Aurora Select.

Massimo Berruti/ Agence VU/ Aurora Photos

Congratulations to Massimo Berruti, photographer for our partner agency, Agence VU, for winning second place in the World Press Photo Contest! Massimo received the second prize in the General News category for his work entitled “Targeted Killings in Karachi, Pakistan.”

We would also like to extend our congratulations to Reinhard Dirscherl, contributing photographer for Aurora Photos, for winning second place in the Nature Singles category with his photograph “Atlantic Sailfish attack Spanish Sardines.”

The World Press Photo Contest is run yearly for photographers, agencies, magazines etc. to demonstrate an overview of how photographers in the press tackle stories across the globe. Winners are invited to attend the annual Awards Days in Amsterdam at the end of April. Well done Massimo and Reinhard!

To view more work from Massimo Berruti, visit Aurora Photos.

To view work from Reinhard Dirscherl, visit Aurora Photos.

Aurora photographer Jen Judge won first place in the Photojournalism category of the Images of the Year awards given by American Photo Magazine for her portraits of survivors of the earthquake in Haiti. “So much press had been focused on the physical destruction, individual tragedies were being overshadowed,” Judge told American Photo. “People had lost their homes and families. The empty background seemed symbolic of everything that had been stripped away from them.”

Aurora photographer Tyler Stableford also won runner-up in the Personal Project category for his image of an F-16 fighter pilot flying in Colorado.

To see more stock photography by Jen Judge and Tyler Stableford, visit Aurora Photos.

To see Tyler Stableford’s portfolio, visit Aurora Select.

The cover of "Afghanistan 2.0" by Sergio Ramazzotti.

Sergio Ramazzotti, a photographer with Aurora Photo’s partner agency Parallelozero, has won the Enzo Baldoni Prize for his latest photo book Afghanistan 2.0. The Enzo Baldoni Prize is one of Italy’s most prestigious photojournalism awards, and was created by the Province of Milan in memory of Italian journalists killed in war zones. This is the second time Sergio Ramazzotti has won the prize.

To see more work by Sergio Ramazzotti, visit his stock archive at Aurora Photos and his portfolio at Aurora Select.

To see more work by Parallelozero, visit Aurora Photos.

Women are Heroes - Kibera, Nairobi, Kenya - 2008 JR / Agence VU / Aurora Photos

Agence VU photographer and visual artist JR has been named the 2011 TED Prize winner for his multiple photographic projects featuring larger-than-life pasted on streets, roofs, buses and trains in countries rife with conflict and poverty. The award comes with $100,000 and the opportunity to present “One Wish to Change the World” at the next TED Conference.

Aurora Photos has represented the work of Agence VU and it’s photographers in North America since 2008.

JR began showing his portraits on the streets of Paris and Rome in 2003. In 2006, his project “Portrait of a Generation” placed portraits of residents of the lower-class Parisian banlieues into the bourgeois heart of the city. Two years later, JR embarked upon “Face 2 Face,” which paired portraits of  Israelis and Palestinians who share a common profession and pasted them on the streets of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. His most recent project, “Women Are Heroes,” used the same method to confront the low status and tribulations of women in Kenya, South-Sudan, Sierra-Leone, Liberia, Brazil, India, Cambodia, and Laos.

To see more work by JR, visit Aurora Photos.

Dropping in at Rincon Point - “It’s the best right-hand point break in California,” says Chuck Graham (pictured), adding that the breaks can be anywhere from a quarter- to a half-mile long. “By the end your legs are screaming at you.” Kevin Steele / Aurora Photos

Aurora photographer Kevin Steele was awarded first place in the Action (Sports / Adventure) category at the 2010 American Photographic Artists Awards. The image is also featured as a two-page spread in the October 2010 issue of Men’s Journal.

Aurora Photos: What does winning this award mean to you?

Kevin Steele: It means I’m on track. The past few years I’ve seen the APA Annual books with photographers I admired – there was one with both Michael Grecco and David Burnett having beautiful action images – and I thought: I can get there. For me that was a mental shift to push my creativity. My favorite images are the ones that did not win, but this one has certainly been in my portfolio this year. Financially it means a nice boost to my promotions as the booty is heavy on the marketing services side – the last thing I need is another camera.

A.P.: What is your photo competition philosophy?

K.S.: I enter the competitions that matter to me in furthering my career, as part of my marketing efforts.  PDN Annual, Communication Arts, APA Awards – these are respected competitions and carry weight with the clients I am courting. They also respect photographer’s rights. If I was a photojournalist then World Press Photo would be the one. I budget for them and this year was fortunate to be selected by both PDN (Faces) and APA.

A.P.: How do you think the winning image compares to your body of work?

K.S.: My body of work recently is all about creating dynamic portraiture. I’m really not a surf photographer. I’m a photographer that shoots people in motion;  very often “water people” and athletes. This image was a planned capture. I knew the storm swell was coming and arranged for a loaner of a 600mm lens. I think the resulting perspective, the texture of the foam (so unusual!),  and that it acts as a reflector back up into the wave makes this image work well. Many of my shots now are created, not capturing the moment as much as planning those moments with friends and models.

To view more work by Kevin Steele, visit Aurora Photos.

Trevor Hiatt pulls an invert and drops a cliff into the Rocksprings drainage south of the the Jackson Hole Mountain Resort in the Jackson Hole Backcountry. Lucas J. Gilman / Aurora Photos

Aurora photographer Lucas Gilman is the newest member of the SanDisk Extreme® Team. Lucas joins C.S. Ling, Corey Rich, Christian Pondella, and Tyler Stableford, all Aurora Contributors and SanDisk team members.

To see more of Lucas Gilman’s work, visit his archived images on Aurora Photos and his Aurora Select portfolio.