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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC and now it's time to announce the winners of the Brian Lehrer Show's best photo on your phone contest for 2021. Each year, the Brian Lehrer show asks you to submit the best photo you took that is sitting on your phone at the end of the year for 2021. Over the last few weeks, we received exactly 711 submissions, wow, and we enlisted the help of professional judges to help pick out three of the best.

Joining me now to talk about their favorite pictures from the set, and by the way, listeners, you can see a gallery of 60 photos. We have it arranged different ways. There's a set of 12 of the best, there's a set of 60 of the best, and you'll see the winning three. Go to wnyc.org and click on Brian Lehrer Show. Joining us now are the judges, Michelle Agins The New York Times photojournalist, and Dave Shelley, creative producer and co-founder of Photoville. Michelle, welcome to WNYC, and Dave, welcome back.

Dave Shelley: Thank you.

Michelle Agins: Well, thank you.

Dave Shelley: Good to be back.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get to our winners, let's just get to know a little bit more about our judges. Dave, you and your colleagues at Photoville have been generously donating your time, I have to say, to help judge this contest the last few years. Do you want to introduce Photoville to listeners who may not be familiar and talk a little bit about the work your organization has been doing as a nonprofit during the pandemic?

Dave Shelley: Sure, Brian, thank you. Hi, everybody. Photoville, we've been around, we're coming up on 11th, 12th year depending on how you look at the calendar, but we decided to make an organization that has become a nonprofit over the years. We're trying to promote a wider understanding and increased access to the art of photography for all and to level the playing field to make everybody have a voice, especially during these times.

During the pandemic, we have struggled like everybody else. Our big premiere festival Photoville, which was drawing thousands and thousands of people we had to go to social distancing, which we've adapted to over the last couple of years. We used to be in like 70 shipping containers and now we've got just everything outside, which is really one of our main principles is to get as many eyeballs as possible to see great work and great stories.

Brian Lehrer: That's great. Michelle Agins to introduce you a little bit to our listeners, you've been with The New York Times since 1989. You've covered everything from the 1992 Bill Clinton Democratic National Convention to prints, let people know that just last fall, The Times honored your work with a retrospective and you published an interactive article with some of your own favorite photos.

One of your favorite projects was The Times series, Another America, Life on 129 Street. You wrote in your piece, ''Another America was originally an assignment about the effects of guns on the Harlem neighborhood but it evolved into a project that I spent more than a year working on.'' Hello, you want to tell everybody a little bit what it's been like to be a photo journalist for The Times these 30 plus years and maybe the story of another America a little bit.

Michelle Agins: Well, is it that long? [chuckles] It seems like it was just yesterday. It's been an amazing journey for me. I don't need to know where to start, except that when I first got the call from The New York Times that they wanted to hire me, I said, "Do you know that I'm Black?" [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: You said that?

Michelle Agins: I said, ''Do you know that I'm Black?'' They said, "Absolutely." I said, "Great."

[laughter]

Michelle Agins: From that point on, it was like all open for me. It was like there wasn't anything that I can do. I covered baseball, I covered basketball and I did a whole series on the WNBA which ran in the Sunday Times magazine from-- it started out to be one picture and it ended up being 10 pages in the cover.

Brian: Would you talk for a second about the difference between-- people may casually think some people, ''Oh, photographs in a newspaper or on a newspaper's website, they accompany the story,'' but I'm sure you would say the photographs can tell the story. How does photojournalism do that?

Michelle Agins: Well, it really brings the reader into the story. In most cases, it's up to me. I hear a little bit of the interview and I do a little bit of the interviewing myself and I put myself in the shoes of the subject and basically in their skin. Then I project those images when I photograph in the newspaper, so--

Brian Lehrer: So you-- [crosstalk] Go ahead.

Michelle Agins: If they say a photo is worth a thousand words, then I'm about taking that picture, finding that picture, and it takes time. It's not about just walking in and taking a picture. You have to actually wait for it.

Brian Lehrer: Speaking about taking time, the two of you have now looked through over 700 submissions from Brian Lehrer Show listeners for the best photo sitting on your phone in 2021 contest, and did the tough work of narrowing down all of those to just three winners. They're going to come on in a minute, but Dave, were there any themes that you've noticed and were they different this year than in the past few years that you've done this with us there.

Dave Shelley: There are some different themes now, Brian. First of all, it's been great how I think this has been growing and we're so happy to be able to do this with you guys. 700, that was a lot to go through, and not just because of the volume of that, but that the quality of the work is increasing every year. This year, one thing that I saw was that people started looking down more. There was more than a handful of photos where people were grabbing reflections from water on the ground, and then having that mirror whatever they were looking up in that area of like a lot of skyscrapers, buildings, people.

That was something that I've seen and that's been happening a lot over the last year that I've been looking at photos, but that was the biggest thing. The biggest challenge is that the work was so strong and to get down to 60 and then to get to 12 and to decide which stories go together with the image; it was a lot. Let's just say that, but we're really excited to see this. The work is fantastic.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, anything you noticed in terms of patterns among the images people submitted?

Michelle Agins: Well, I like the fact that some of the people actually just waited and did take that picture. They took the time to frame it, there was thought in it. Some I thought needed to add more time, but for the most part, they made it happen. Sometimes you drive by a story and you go, "Okay, let me turn back around and get out of the car and walk up to it." All these photos remind me that they hung out and waited.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, again, you can see the winning photos @wnyc.org. Click on Brian Lehrer Show and the first winner we're going to have on is Marjorie Zien. Her photo was of two people dressed in almost business casual attire, you might say walking down the street at night, and they have these huge pumpkins on their heads. Marjorie joins us now. Hey there, welcome to the show and congratulations.

Marjorie Zien: Thanks.

Brian: What would you tell us about this snap that you took? I'll tell our listeners that in the description of the photo that you submitted, you wrote this was taken on Halloween, the village parade was back and so are the massive crowds, so take it from there.

Marjorie Zien: All right. Well, every year I go out, well, I live in the village so of course I'm out and around all the time anyway. The parade, it's always a festive event here and last year and 2020 it didn't happen, so it was back this year and I got to tell you was so packed that I couldn't even get anywhere near the actual parade route because it was way too crowded for my [chuckles] likings under the circumstances. I just walked around the side streets and there's tons of people, everybody's outhouse fronts are decorated and the whole thing.

I just saw those two guys walking down the street and I just grabbed the photo. I took a lot of other photos. I actually tell people I take a lot of photos, I just don't show everybody the bad one. That one came out particularly good so I thought it was a fun photo and it shows that the village is back, it never really went anywhere. We were just on hold for a year and hopefully, things will return to more normal soon.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hope . Dave, why'd you pick this one for your top three? Two guys looking like they might be going to work in an office somewhere except they've got pumpkin heads on.

Dave Shelley: I just thought it was a nice riff on two pumpkin guys having a conversation walking down the street. I assumed that it was like from the Halloween parade and I just saw that everything was really happening in this photo, which you got one guy, he's probably talking to the other guy. One guy's checking something on their phone, what their next party stop is. Also, there's motion in it. The lighting is great to hit the pumpkin heads. It's its own world and that's what I liked about it.

Brian Lehrer: Marjorie Zien, thank you so much. Moving right along the next photo winner is Eva Farkas. She took a photo of an elderly woman laying in bed and two younger women on either side of her with their hands on her. It almost looks like a photo you might see in a New York Times story. Ava, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations.

Eva Farkas: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Tell us about the three women in that photo and what that moment was.

Eva Farkas: Yes, this was my aunt Toni. She's the woman in the middle and actually she was only 77. She aged very quickly because she was diagnosed with a very aggressive brain cancer that progressed like in only a year. She was being cared for by my cousins who are nurses, who actually brought her to their Brooklyn home to live with them. This was taken in my cousin Vilma's home. The other women in the photo are my niece Angelica and my other cousin Alona who's also a nurse.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle, what stood out to you about this photo that you put it in the top three?

Michelle Agins: Well, it reminded me of a story I did of a young lady who was murdered when she was 16 years old. I had to find a way to tell that story so that The New York Times reader would not be like grossed out or freaked out. I found a sensitive way to do the story by photographing the young lady's hands with all the pictures that all her friends and schoolmates had left at the end of the funeral. When I saw that image, it reminded me of so many stories that I had worked on where it was a sensitive moment and I had to actually be just in the room and just telegraphing the things I saw as the time went by.

Brian Lehrer: Eva, my condolences for your loss of your aunt Toni.

Michelle Agins: Yes, mine too.

Brian Lehrer: In this time of the pandemic when everybody's focused on one disease, was there something about your aunt having something else that you wanted to make really public here?

Eva Farkas: I just wanted to make public this private grief. I felt connected, I think, to the grief that many people have experienced during the pandemic. I just thought that there was so much love that I witnessed during the time of my aunt battling with cancer. Her family really rallying around her, taking her in, giving her very intimate care that's not really comfortable for people to do usually. I just witnessed so many amazing things and that was the last time I got to visit with her. She was already in a non-verbal state and she passed away a few days later, and yes, I just felt like I wanted to witness what was happening around me and--

Michelle Agins: That was very brave and beautiful.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. It certainly was a photo a of love. That's what jumped out to my eye just as you put it. Thank you very much. Congratulations, Eva Farkas, on being one of our three best photo on your phone in 2021 winners. Last but certainly not least, there's Eve LeBer and her submission. I guess you might say if we covered Halloween in Photo 1, maybe this one has a bit of Thanksgiving flare because it's a photo of turkeys on Staten Island. Eve, welcome to WNYC, and congratulations.

Eve LeBer: Thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Its turkeys in front of a house with a scene of some sky also and trees. Describe it to people who haven't seen it.

Eve LeBer: It's very early in the morning and I'm going down the hill to work and there they are. There's the turkeys. The sun is coming up, everything was just lined up. I got out of my car and I just took about three or four pictures just hoping that they wouldn't run away, but there's Turkeys all over Staten Island.

Michelle Agins: Exactly. [chuckles]

Eve LeBer: Pardon?

[laughter]

Michelle Agins: I'm going to tell you, turkeys are hard to shoot.

Brian Lehrer: I think our guests took that the wrong way when you said there are turkeys all over Staten Island. I'm just kidding.

Michelle Agins: And they're hard to shoot.

Brian Lehrer: Because they're a moving target?

Michelle Agins: No, because as soon as they think that you're near them, they scatter. I spent a year in Pennsylvania and I'm telling you, I thought I could get up close, so I ended up using my 600 a lot to get pictures of turkeys and deer and bears and stuff like that. I was taken by this picture. It just reminded me of something out of Blue Bloods. Then I saw turkeys. [laughs]

Brian Lehrer: Was this unusual because if they were there one day, you might think those turkeys live around there and they'd be there a lot of days. Why was this strange?

Eve LeBer: Because they do move around. They move around so much and they have babies. I saw a woman in her pajamas one morning with a water gun and I stopped my car and I said, ''What are you doing?'' She said, ''I'm shooting the turkeys. I don't want them in my yard.'' I was like, --

Michelle Agins: They don't want their poop.

Eve LeBer: -- ''You can't shoot them.''

Dave Shelley: It's a real problems. We need to address this, I think, at some point on another conversation.

Brian Lehrer: I think so. I see an issue debate coming up.

Eve LeBer: They're in the trees. They were on power lines.

Dave Shelley: They're everywhere.

Brian Lehrer: What part of Staten Island was that?

Eve LeBer: New Brighton.

Brian Lehrer: Right.

Eve LeBer: Whoa, wait a minute. I live in New Brighton and I drive, I guess, Stapleton its called. I drive through a couple of neighborhoods to get to my job.

Brian Lehrer: Do you take a lot of photos or was this a one-off?

Eve LeBer: No, I'm always looking for something. If I see something that catches my eye wherever I am I'll try to get a shot. I studied photography and art school a million years ago. It taught me so much about just composition and looking and being responsible for everything in that picture. You're responsible for it. Then you have the accidents and I've had people point out the orb to me, there's an orb in it. I'm like, ''What?'' Then if you look in the house, there's a rainbow in one of the windows, a little picture of a rainbow, and it looks just like the fan of the turkey. I don't know. You can always find other things in a picture that you didn't even know were there.

Michelle Agins: I saw how the light was hitting the tail and I felt like you could have waited one more minute. It was perfect the way the light was coming in and I'm like, ''One more minute. One more minute.''

Brian Lehrer: Eve LeBer, thanks-- [crosstalk] Oh, go ahead real quick because we only have one more minute.

Eve LeBer: Me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, oh, I thought you were trying to add something.

Eve LeBer: I was just trying to say when I go up over this hill and come down the Verrazzano is there and the sun is coming up and the clouds and sometimes you don't even watch the road, which is dangerous and you're driving and you see these sunrises and you go, ''Holy mackerel.'' Anyway, thank you so much.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for bringing your voice along with your eye, Eve LeBer. Listeners, check out the winners and more submissions @wnyc.org/bestphoto2021. That's the easiest way to get there. The most direct if you want to see all these images. wnyc.org/bestphoto2021 to see the winning submissions, the big three, but also there's a group of 12, and another gallery of 60 best photos 2021 after you type in best photo, singular, best photo 2021 after wnyc.org/. Dave, 10 seconds. What's coming up at Photoville?

Dave Shelley: Oh, so much. We can't even go into it, but we're looking forward to this year. We have a lot of projects coming up, different education components that we're working on, and getting ready for the festival, again, at some point this year.

Brian Lehrer: Michelle Agins, what's your latest assignment for The Times?

Michelle Agins: Oh, my last assignment was with the farmers out in Pennsylvania. There was a theater cut on a farm and I was driving by and I went, ''No way there's a theater here right in the middle of a farm.''

Brian Lehrer: There you go. Thank you both.

Michelle Agins: They're called Perfarmers.

Brian Lehrer: Perfarmers? [laughs] Thank you so much for being performers here, Dave Shelley and Michelle Agins. wnyc.org/bestphoto2021.

 

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