Colton Resident Excels in National Photography Competition

COLTON>> Shelby Horton, Colton resident and Colton High School Alumni, recently ranked high in a national photography conference that was held in Louisville, Kentucky and won first place at the state level. Horton earned an Associates of Arts degree from Hutchinson Community College located in Hutchinson, Kansas and worked as the editor in chief of her college newspaper. She said it was then that her professor informed her that the college was going to be the host for the Kansas SkillsUSA State Competition. She said her professor recommended she compete in the photography portion since she had been working as a photojournalist for the past two years, along with taking his photography classes. “I entered the contest mainly for fun,” Horton said. “I knew some of the other photographers who would be competing alongside me including photographers that were on my newspaper staff. Loribeth Reynolds from Hutchinson Kansas, was among the photographers and I greatly respected her work and felt I had little chance of beating her.” She won the gold medal award but was not present to accept the award because she said she had previously decided to stay behind to help publish that week’s newspaper for her school. Horton said she was challenged and pushed to do things that she had never done in her career before like creating conceptual art by piecing together different photos we had taken that day. “I loved the adrenaline rush and having to be on my toes for the different challenges they threw at me,” Horton said. “It's a great experience that also has a strong focus on preparing the youth of the nation for the job market and being successful in their field. Horton said it was by accident she fell into photography since her first and true passion is journalism. “I started to learn that words weren't the only way you could tell a story,” Horton said. “As cliché as it sounds, a picture does say a thousand words. My favorite thing to photograph is people, their expressions, body movement and clothing. I want to be able to tell a person life story and personality through a photo. Photography just happened to fit perfectly with my love of journalism because it gives me another outlet to tell stories.” Aside from her most recent accomplishment, Horton became second-runner up for Journalist of the Year at the Kansas Collegiate conference and won first place for Best News Story, Best Feature Story and Best Headline Writing. “I earned some respect in the field of my dream, but also in something that I've learned to love and been allowed to grow in,” Horton said. Horton said she hopes she can continue to work in journalism and photography and earn her bachelor’s degree in the future.