Prize-winning newspaper photographer publishes book of his favorite images
By JUDITH O. ETZEL

Photo by Jerry Sowden - Newspaper photographer Jerry L. Sowden has published a photography book that showcases people, events and places in this area. The book features about 100 professional color photographs, many of them chosen by newspaper industry organizations as top prize winning pictures. His book, "Images - Through a Journalistic Eye" goes on sale today.

Prize-winning photojournalist Jerry L. Sowden of Oil City has published a book that captures local images on a wide variety of topics.

"Images - Through a Journalistic Eye" features about 100 color photographs that depict people and places in this area. Some of the pictures have been previously published in The Derrick and The News-Herald newspapers and a number of them have won top photography awards.

Sowden, 38, is a native of Minnesota and attended Southwest Minnesota State University where he began his photojournalism career. He worked part-time as a sports photographer for the Independent, a daily newspaper in his hometown of Marshall, Minn., and quickly moved up to a full-time job as news and feature photographer.

In 1996, he joined the staff of The Derrick and has served as the newspaper's chief photographer since then. He also free-lances and has had his work published in several magazines, trade sheets and newspapers.

Overall, Sowden's photographs have been consistently selected as among the best in Pennsylvania's newspapers. His most recent tributes came last spring when the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association chose four of his pictures for first place honors. The subjects ranged from Polk floodwaters and a regional rodeo to a soldier's funeral and high school football.

In his new "Images" book, Sowden pictorially explores themes that reflect both a newspaper's deadline pressure and a birdwatcher's patience.

In the first instance, the entries include spectacular photographs of a father's farewell hug with his Iraq-bound soldier son, a flooded Polk Borough, a mud-sopped Franklin football game and a Cranberry Township barn fire.

As to the patience factor, Sowden has snapped pictures of geese on a fog-shrouded Justus Lake in Two Mile Run Park, nesting eagles in Venango County and butterflies on a garden sunflower.

People, both in crowds and solitary, are featured throughout "Images." There is a motorcycle-driving Santa Claus conversing with the Clarion County sheriff, Penelec trainees tossing a basketball while atop utility poles and an Oil City resident walking through the snow.

Buildings and special venues, too, get special treatment in Sowden's book. An inviting nighttime scene of Franklin's Liberty Street is printed adjacent to a stunning picture of an Oil City bridge highlighted by reflections on the Allegheny River.

"Newspaper photographs have such a short life - there for a day and then gone," Sowden said. "I thought some of them should be available again and that's why I put them together in this book."

A limited edition of "Images - Through a Journalistic Eye" will go on sale today. They may be purchased for $28.95 at The Derrick office on West First Street, Oil City.

Softcover and hardcover editions may be ordered online at www.blurb.com/bookstore (search: Jerry L. Sowden).