Carolyn Drake’s Asian rivers project, published in the March-April issue under the title “Return to the Center of the World” (http://orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/5331), just won first place in the nature story category in the POYI competition. While this is not for the Orion article specifically (these awards are first and foremost for the photographers projects and her project was not only our assignment), what we published was the primary editorial expression of this winning series and we were largely responsible for developing and supporting the project.

POYI, which stands for Picture of the Year International (http://www.poyi.org) is one of the largest, most prestigious annual photojournalism awards programs in the world. Winning one of these categories is a huge milestone in a photographer’s career. This is tremendous affirmation that what we’re doing with these sorts of deeper photojournalistic projects is at times, literally, some of the best work happening anywhere.