The best of the best in military communications were celebrated Friday afternoon during the DoD's annual Communicators of Excellence award ceremony.
Held at the Defense Information School, the event honored the best in military graphic arts, photography, videography, and print and broadcast journalism. Both service members and civilians were awarded for their work during 2012.
"I've had an opportunity to see your work firsthand -- what tremendous work," said Ray Shepherd, director of Defense Media Activity and guest speaker at the event. "What great inspiration you all provide to the communicators we have out there."
The ceremony combined winners from the Visual Information Awards, Thomas Jefferson Awards for journalism and Visual Information Production Awards.
More than 3,500 entries were submitted by 603 entrants for the Visual Information Awards, which consists of several categories in photography, videography and graphic art.
Entries are judged by a panel of civilian professionals in the visual communications field.
Several winners were announced for the medium in categories such as news and sports photos for photography; illustration and fine art for graphic art; and combat documentation and feature story for videography.
The top winners in the Visual Information Awards were Navy Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class David B. Danals, Military Graphic Artist of the Year; Air Force Master Sgt. Jeremy T. Lock, Military Photographer of the Year; and Staff Sgt. Robert A. Ham, Videographer of the Year.
Both Lock and Ham have achieved the awards before, with Lock winning Photographer of the Year a record seven times and Ham winning Videographer of the Year three times.
This year's honor, however, was the first for Danals who had been a member of DMA last year before transitioning out of the military.
"It feels good," he said. "I worked real hard at it all year long. I never stopped telling myself I was going to win it."
The Thomas Jefferson Awards Program recognizes military and civilian employee print and broadcast journalists for outstanding achievements in furthering the objectives of the DoD. Prior to the Thomas Jefferson Awards, each military branch judged its own entries and selected its best entry in each category for the interservice level.
Judges at the interservice level are selected from recognized experts in the commercial broadcast and print journalism fields.
Similar to the Visual Information Awards, the Thomas Jefferson Awards consisted of 23 broadcast categories and 27 print journalism categories.
The top awards were presented to: Sgt. Rebecca Schawb, Military Broadcast Journalist of the Year; Matthew Clouse, Civilian Broadcast Journalist of the Year; Sgt. Elliot Valdez, Outstanding New Broadcaster; Air Force Tech. Sgt. Matthew Bates, Military Print Journalist of the Year; Elizabeth Collins, Civilian Print Journalist of the Year; and Air Force Staff Sgt. Katie Ward, Outstanding New Writer of the Year.
"What you do is an absolutely great honor for you and for the people who get to see and value your work," Shepherd said. "All of you are getting the chance to tell a tremendous story for our folks who are out there in uniform. ... Everything that you do is part of history. ... You are part of telling history. The history of the United States military is in you."
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