On Tuesday, May 3 College of DuPage held their annual High School exposure photo contest and this year two girls from York high school went home with awards. This was the first time that Art teacher Kelsey Thompson gave her students the chance to participate in the event.

Both Caroline Stasica and Madison Casey have been in art classes since their freshman year and they eventually worked their way up to AP art. As their art evolved they both found that photography was their passion.

“My favorite classes have been traditional photo classes because they’ve fostered my appreciation of film photography and because it’s really rewarding to develop and print your own photographs,” Caroline Stasica explained.

Although all of Caroline’s photos that were entered were digital, she ended up taking second place.

With Caroline’s big win comes some big prizes. She was presented with a one-year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, photo paper, a $75 gift card to Pj’s camera, a 3-hour studio pass to PROCAM, and an SD card holder.

Gallery • 7 Photos

"My favorite photo is the one of me hanging on the clothesline because it was the result of irritation." Photo by Caroline Stasica

Madison Casey who had no experience with photography going into high school has come a long way. She took her first photography class freshman year, which was film. This class focused on learning the basics of a camera: shutter speed, aperture, and ISO. Madison has gone on to taking Photo 2 Black and White and Digital, Photo 3 advanced film and eventually AP.

With all these classes Madison has taken, it wasn’t her first time showing off her work, but this was her first time presenting her work at COD, and she won Honorable Mention.

“Because judging art, photography, in particular, is very subjective in general, I knew that winning an award in such a large contest would be a challenge, however, I believed that the quality of my work was of my highest potential and I was excited to share it with others simply for the love of photography,” explained Madison. Madison’s photography consisted of 5 photos: Life in Death, Rabbit Man, French Cuisine, Showstopper, and Hidden Forest. 

Gallery • 5 Photos

"I wanted to show movement in this photo, and I decided a good way to do this would be to have a picture of a dancer frozen in the air with characteristics showing that she is moving (such as her hair flying backwards)." Photo by Madison Casey

Madison was given a full year subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud complete, a $50 gift card to PJ’s Camera & Photo and a TENBA tools cable pouch for her win.

A big congratulations to these girls for their hard work and amazing photography skills.