Kyle Robertson
For the third time four years Kyle Robertson of The Columbus Dispatch has won the ONPA Monthly Clip Contest Photographer of the Year title. Andy Morrison from The Blade finished second in the contest after placing third the two previous years. Barbara Perenic from The Columbus Dispatch finished in third place.
Robertson won in every category of the contest during the year and finished the year with 1564 points breaking the record of 1224 points which had been set by both Eamon Queeney of The Dispatch in 2014 and Lisa DeJong from The Plain Dealer in 2012.
There was not a lot of drama in this years contest. For the past few months Robertson had a comfortable lead but he didn’t take his foot off the gas picking up five wins in the final month. Robertson had 40 wins during the course of the year, 12 of these wins were sports with seven wins in both portrait and picture story.
Izabella Thomas, 8, preys for a 10-year-old boy who died after being shot in the head in Hilliard. Izabella lives across the street from where the boy was shot. Izabella said, “I don’t like to hear about people being shot, it makes me sad. I hope that little boy has a happy life in heaven.” (Kyle Robertson/The Columbus Dispatch)
2016 Final Top 10 Standings
1st – Kyle Robertson, The Columbus Dispatch – 1564
2nd – Andy Morrison, The (Toledo) Blade – 1124
3rd – Barbara Perenic, The Columbus Dispatch – 954
4th – Kareem Elgazzar, Cincinniati Enquirer – 734
5th – Adam Cairns, The Columbus Dispatch – 724
6th – Eric Albrecht, The Columbus Dispatch – 634
7th – Meg Vogel, Cincinnati Enquirer – 604
8th – Patricia Schaeffer, (Lisbon) Morning Journal – 534
9th – Joshua Bickel, ThisWeek Newspapers – 484
10th – Jonathan Quilter, The Columbus Dispatch – 464
Kareen Elgazzar and Meg Vogel from the Cincinnati Enquirer finished in the Top 10 marking the first time that two photographers from that publication did so in the same year.