Berg has received four nominations in three categories for the annual News Photographers Association of Canada pictures of the year.
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Reflecting her wide range of work, Saskatoon StarPhoenix photographer Michelle Berg has received four nominations in three categories for the annual News Photographers Association of Canada pictures of the year.
Berg, with more than a decade of experience at the StarPhoenix, is nominated once each in the picture story news and picture story feature categories, and twice in the multimedia category.
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Her picture story news nomination focused on the final days of the Saskatoon StarPhoenix building. The newsroom sat empty since the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns began. Journalists believed they’d eventually return to their newsroom, but when parent company Postmedia elected to put the building up for sale, reporters began permanently working remotely — and staff had to find homes for archives dating back to 1902.
Her picture story feature highlighted the lifelong passion for bull riding of Saskatchewan’s Weston Davidson. At the age of two, he won his first trophy, for riding a sheep. Twenty years later, he regularly finds himself on 2,000-pound bulls, but his enthusiasm hasn’t changed.
Berg received two nominations in the multimedia category, one for her Born to Ride feature on Davidson and the other titled The Final Five, which looked at the last five operators of the famed StarPhoenix printing press. Since the closure of the building, printing of the StarPhoenix now takes place at a plant in Estevan.
“The well-deserved recognition for Michelle highlights her incredible skill and talent behind the camera, no matter the topic or situation,” Saskatoon StarPhoenix city editor Dave Deibert said.
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“She has an incredible way of making her subjects feel comfortable and then capturing them for the reader through her lens.”
The winners are scheduled to be announced Sunday.
Berg has been honoured previously on a national level for her work.
In 2021, she won NPAC awards across three categories. She received first place in the feature photo story category, second in the single multimedia category and third in the sports action category.
Berg’s first nomination for a national award came in 2017, when she was nominated for the multimedia award for her work on the People Project feature about Iona Whipp. For Pride Week, Berg wanted to capture the transformation of a drag queen. Berg was there when Aron DoSouto transformed into Iona, a two- to three-hour process.
Last year, she was nominated for a National Newspaper Award in the breaking news photograph category for an image she captured during an arrest by Saskatoon police after a standoff.
Earlier this year, StarPhoenix reporter Julia Peterson was nominated for a Canadian Association of Journalists award, which annually recognize the country’s best journalism.
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Peterson is nominated for the 2023 APTN/CAJ Truth and Reconciliation award for a portfolio of stories celebrating and respecting two-spirit lives in Saskatchewan, part of a larger series called Prairie Pride.
The CAJ awards ceremony takes place June 1 in Toronto.
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