The Judges for the 2019 BPPA Pictures of the Year contest are:
Elsa Garrison, Getty Images
Elsa Garrison is a staff photographer for Getty Images covering sport and is based in New York City. She is responsible for covering professional and collegiate sports in New York City and the Northeast region of the United States. Elsa regularly covers events such as the Super Bowl, the World Series, FIFA World Cup and the Olympic games.
Elsa began her career in 1996 with the sport photo agency Allsport(Allsport was acquired by Getty Images in 1998) and was based in Los Angeles. Elsa was the first woman hired as a staff photographer for Allsport and also Getty Images. Over the span of the next 20 years, Elsa moved to St. Louis, Boston and then to New York as her responsibilities expanded to larger markets.
Elsa’s work can been seen in websites, magazines and newspapers across the globe.
Abel Uribe, Chicago Tribune
Abel Uribe has been a photojournalist at the Chicago Tribune since 2002. Prior to that he was the chief photographer at the Santa New Mexican. He began his career as a sports photographer at the Jacksonville Journal Courier in Jacksonville, Illinois while studying biology and physical education at MacMurray College.
Early on Uribe won a variety of monthly clip contests, including monthly contest photographer of the year 1995. In Santa Fe he won several awards for a major piece on the heroin epidemic in northern New Mexico.
Since arriving at the Tribune, Uribe does not enter contests, but has won a couple of Lisagor Awards and has been a finalist other times. He has also won awards for articles on workers performing dangerous jobs, for which he proposed some of the stories.
Uribe has spent most of his career following the stories of immigrants, including a year documenting the experiences of Elvira Arellano as she sought sanctuary in a Humboldt Park (Chicago) church, until she was deported to her home state of Michoacan, Mexico.
In early 2013, Uribe was instrumental in starting the Tribune’s overnight photo crew to document Chicago’s gun violence in what became “Chicago under the Gun” with reporter Peter Nickeas and four other photojournalists. It quickly became one of Tribune’s most popular pages.
Uribe is driven by a sense of fairness and justice for all members of this planet, especially those that are victimized or bullied.
Matt McClain, The Washington Post
Matt McClain is a staff photographer with The Washington Post. He previously worked at the Rocky Mountain News and the Ventura County Star. During his time as a photographer, McClain has covered a wide-range of assignments, including President Ronald Reagan’s funeral, the 2004 Asian Tsunami, the 2008 Democratic National Convention, three presidential inaugurations, the earthquake in Nepal, the Zika Virus outbreak in Brazil, Hurricane Irma in Florida and the mass shootings in Las Vegas and Parkland, FL. His work has received recognition from Pictures of the Year International, World Press Photo, Scripps Howard Foundation National Journalism Awards, best portfolio in the Atlanta Photojournalism Seminar contest and NPPA Best of Photojournalism. Born and raised in rural Indiana, McClain is a graduate of Indiana University. An avid sports fan, McClain also enjoys bar trivia and karaoke. One of his lifetime goals is to be a contestant on Jeopardy.