"90 Year Old Feels Lucky to Take Part in Harvest"
Multi-Photo Award Winner
Provost News First in Provincial Photo Competition
The Provost News took first place in a province-wide newspaper competition.

The Alberta Weekly Newspaper Association announced the ATCO Gas and ATCO Electric sponsored awards on Saturday night, January 26 during a two day symposium.

In this “multi-photo” category there were over 60 entries from community newspapers across Alberta.

The News entry was entitled “90 Year Old Feels Lucky to Take Part in Harvest” and features long-time farmer Harold Olson among 11 pictures used by photojournalist Rich Holmes.

The two page spread was featured in the September 12, 2007 edition.

This competition was a wide-open one and not categorized by size of newspaper. Second place was won by the St. Albert Gazette, circulation over 24,000 copies; while third was awarded to the Red Deer Express which sends out 39,000 copies. The Provost News has approximately 2,000 copies on average weekly.
Holmes says that working with Olson and his family made the two day (and part of the night) challenge fun because of their co-operation and easy manner. “The 90 year old didn’t even know I had called his wife Betty and asked to come out to the farm until he arrived for dinner—and discovered the photographer sitting at his kitchen table. Then it took a bit of coaxing for the humble man to have a camera pointed at him during his harvest duties” says Holmes, who is also an AWNA board member and past president.

The winning entry in the 2008 AWNA competition is re-printed inside.

There are approximately 114 members in the AWNA.

Click here for a PDF of the award-winning spread.

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