Announcing the Winners of the Feature Shoot Reader's Spotlight (March)

We invited photographers from around the globe to submit their best bodies of work, with all genres welcome for our Reader’s Spotlight. We are excited to announce the winners for March: Maureen Ruddy Burkhart, Susan Borowitz and Shira Gold. We will be profiling each of these photographers on Feature Shoot in the weeks to come.

We want to thank all photographers who have submitted for our Reader’s Spotlight over the past few months. Starting today, we will be discontinuing the “Reader’s Spotlight” email, but will have some exciting news (coming soon) on how you can submit your work for FREE going forward.

‘Evanescence: for things that are fleeting or quickly disappearing’ by Maureen Ruddy Burkhart

“Throughout the pandemic, and especially the summer of 2021, I took my love of nature to a different place…a place of extreme slowness and quietude. I frequented the same places over and over which led me to notice even small changes. One day I saw a dead tree vibrating and, upon closer inspection, noticed it was covered with baby swallows waiting for their parents to bring food. I photographed them all summer until one day the city sprayed for mosquitos and they disappeared (no food, no birds). As luck would have it, I found them at another lake and continued my pursuit. The mosquitos incident awoke in me an acute awareness of the fragility of birds…and of the planet. So I have named the bird images “Evanescence: for things that are fleeting or quickly disappearing”. —Maureen Ruddy Burkhart

‘By A Thread’ by Shira Gold

“Conceived in the fall of 2020 as Vancouver’s lower mainland was besieged with what many ironically called a “moth pandemic”, By a Thread evolved in the months and year following, finally completed in synchronicity with the easing of pandemic mandates. In keeping with earlier series, the imagery of By a Thread expresses a shared experience through visual metaphors.” — Shira Gold

‘Locked-In’ by Susan Borowitz

“The series “Locked-In” explores the phenomenon of feeling stuck and the failure to control the forces that seem to dictate our lives. Using metaphor and imagery that suggest the inability to move on or to complete a task, the series evokes the absence of agency particularly by women, who feel consciously aware of what they should pursue or speak up about, but feel impotent in the face of a dominant power: unequal relationships, societal expectations and especially the disappearance of relevancy with encroaching age.” —Susan Borowitz