Feature Photography
Sung Park / Austin American-Statesman

Did the American-Statesman equip Sung Park with any protective gear when it assigned him to a watermelon contest photo?

"No, I was working at my own risk," Park said, laughing.

"If I had had some rain gear with me, I would have put it on."

His winning Best of Cox entry also included a moving black and white study of an Austin mother and child who are 100 and 80 years old, respectively.

"I like to get in really close to people, to get them on their quieter side," Park said.

The native of Seoul, South Korea, immigrated to the U.S. with his family in 1975, and settled in Andover, Mass.

He graduated from Syracuse University with a degree in photography, and interned at USA Today and Gannett's Rochester Newspapers. These experiences placed him in the midst of the wave of technological change in U.S. photojournalism.

"At USA Today, as early as in 1991, they had one of the digital cameras," he said. "It was one of the old Sonys, a monster."

When Park enrolled at Syracuse's Newhouse School of Public Communication, he was interested in pursuing a career in commercial photography.

"But by the time I graduated, I knew I wanted to be in photojournalism," Park said.