McDonough’s “Hydrant Shear” Wins First Place Honors – NPPA West

Veteran News24/680 Readers may recognize the efforts of accomplished news photographer Sean McDonough – whose work frequently appears on our digital pages.

We happen to think a lot of Sean, and not just because he brings cool kitchen creations to staff meetings, but because he’s a heck of a “street man” and they just don’t make a lot of those. To be one, you need technical skills, good timing, a strong nose for news, luck, and charm. We recognized those characteristics in Sean early on and, recently, so have judges from the National Press Photographers Association (Western Division) who called this photo of firefighters battling a gushing hydrant shear “a sharp photo captured in a chaotic moment.”

Well, yeah. Sean does a lot of that and makes it look easy. It isn’t.

Congrats, Shooter Man. As a reward we’re reducing your number of daily floggings while raising your daily photo quota. Welcome to Journalism.