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JCCC Student Wins First Place in Photography Contest
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Johnson County Community College
Press Release

College Information and Publications
913-469-8500
Julie Haas, Director, ext. 3120
Peggy Graham, Writer, ext. 3425
Tyler Cundith, Sports Information Director, ext. 3122

11/08/05
Story by Anne Christiansen-Bullers

JCCC Student Wins First Place in Photography Contest

Photo by Nathan Lang

OVERLAND PARK, Kan. – Johnson County Community College student Nathan Lang won first place in a national photography contest for his photo of a Kansas City murder scene. Lang is a staff photographer with The Campus Ledger, the JCCC student newspaper.

The competition was sponsored by the Associated Collegiate Press and College Media Advisers at its annual fall convention. Since the convention hastily was moved from New Orleans to the Westin Crown Center, Kansas City, Mo., after Hurricane Katrina, Lang was able to use a home-field advantage.

Contest organizers instructed student photographers attending the convention to shoot images of Kansas City during 48 hours of the convention’s Oct. 27-30 run. Lang stumbled across a murder scene only blocks away from the convention site at 8 a.m. Oct. 28. 

“I couldn't see much of the street that was blocked off, so I focused my camera on the television reporters and camera men lined up across the police tape. My attention was still on documenting the media coverage until I decided to go up to the top level of the parking garage next to the crime scene,” he said. “I looked down and saw the unfortunate reality of what had occurred an hour earlier.”

Ironically, the name of the photography contest was “Kansas City Portrait” and other winners’ photos showed a more positive feel of Lang’s own city.

“Despite the alarming number of murders in Kansas City this year, I feel this photograph is also an unfortunate portrait of this country, in which more people are killed by guns than anywhere else in the world,” he said.

The winning photo can viewed at http://www.collegemedia.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=78&Itemid=106

Lang attended Ottawa High School and currently lives in Overland Park.