The 2023 Circle of Excellence Awards recognized 15 photography winners across individual photograph, series/collection, and portrait categories. Here, we go behind the scenes with five photographers who captured award-winning shots of athletes, activists, and campus communities with curiosity, dedication, and ambition.
What Faith Means to Me
Boston University, Massachusetts, U.S.
How do you visually depict what faith means to an individual? This is the question that propelled Senior Photojournalist Cydney Scott to capture the gold COE Award-winning photo essay, “What Faith Means to Me,” for BU Today, Boston University’s online news and marketing site.
“A huge part of religious culture is being surrounded by community, and we were literally in a time where you weren’t allowed to be around community,” says Scott, who conducted the photo shoot amidst the pandemic in early 2022. But this is also what inspired the essay to feature day-to-day observations of faith across the Massachusetts, U.S., university campus.
“A lot of people are fairly proud of their faith. So, they took an opportunity to share it with other people,” says Scott. “Every last person [I photographed] was kind and welcoming.”
This included the Devil Slayers, a group of Christian women who gather over meals for prayer and Bible study. “It’s a big deal to be right in somebody’s space while they’re talking about personal things and trusting that what they say isn’t going to be shared [because] they understand what my purpose is and that I’m going to stick to it. I was able to meet a table of lovely women and document their time together,” says Scott.
