Good job

 

You can see Craig F. Walker's Pulitzer-prize-winning feature here.

The bit in the video above that gets me is when Ostrom, the subject of the feature, hugs Walker and says, "you did a great job". To get that praise from someone whose darkest days you have photographed and presented to the world must feel amazing. I'd trade that for a Pulitzer, especially if I had two.

I think this is a great piece of work. It was only published online apparently, which makes me wonder how it was financed (sorry to be so materialistic). Walker is a staff photographer but did he get paid for the weeks or months spent on this work? If so how did the newspaper hope to get a return on the investment by publishing online? Now that the work is Pulitzer material I suppose the Denver Post will syndicate it all over...

I'm guessing Walker did this work out-of-hours, not as an assignment but with support from the Post. If so the Editor is asking a lot when he says, "It goes to show good work will be recognised, and we want to do a lot of good work... so do it again".