Here's a breakdown of all the shutter speeds photographers used in this year's entries in the Sports Action category! Infographic by Liv Paggiarino. 

Our first category of the competition was Spot News; it was also our smallest category of stills submissions. Here's what the judging of that first category looked like on our end. 

Photos by Joel Chan

CPOY 74 Judge Scott Strazzante watches the slideshow of entries for the Spot News Category on Sunday. 

MU student volunteer Army Feffer takes out some clementines for the morning; his role this morning was "host", which includes making coffee and making sure the snack table was well-stocked.

CPOY Director Jackie Bell gives some guidelines on judging to this year's Stills Division judges, Scott Strazzante, Adriana Teresa Latorney, Alexa Keefe and Genaro Molina, prior to the judging of the first category.

Gotta get that caffeine! CPOY Coordinator Hilary Tan grabs some much-needed coffee before judging on Sunday morning. 

We have some shiny new CPOY stickers to put on our mugs now! 

CPOY 74 Judge Adriana Teresa Letorney mulls over an image during Spot News judging.

The judges look through every image large on the screen; they'll see each image submitted at least twice before finalizing a decision on whether to vote it in or out. 

Here's a breakdown of the apertures used this year in the Portrait category. Infographic by Liv Paggiarino. 

CPOY Coordinator Yanran Huang interviewed Lynda Gonzalez of the University of Texas, who won gold last year in the Spot News category for her image, "Fourth of July Shooting." 

Friends and family members of Devonte Ortiz gather on Friday, July 6, 2018, at Pleasant Hills Apartments in Austin, Texas. Witnesses say Ortiz's neighbor Jason Roche fatally shot 19-year-old Ortiz in the early hours of July 4 in a dispute about fireworks. 

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Yanran Huang: What’s the most difficult thing while covering spot news? How do you deal with it?

Lynda Gonzalez: In general, I think the most difficult thing about covering spot news is just not knowing what’s going to happen. And I think also managing a lot of adrenaline, well, also trying to kind of managing a lot of emotions to what’s just happening. Sometimes the setting is very sad and you've got a lot of adrenaline rushing through your body but also... I'm a really empathetic person. You can get filled with grief really quickly if you're covering a funeral or if you're covering something where someone died. So I think the most difficult thing about covering spot news is just managing a lot of physical responses to what you're photographing as well as emotional responses.

 I’m a strong believer in getting therapy. I think therapy can give you a lot of the tools to manage in the moment those things that are really difficult. It also has helped me adopt mindfulness practices that I can do while I'm in those moments where I'm just kind of be overwhelmed, which tends to happen when you're having breaking news. And I think grounding yourself and taking a moment to breathe deeply and ground yourself is helpful.

YH: How is your internship in The Dallas Morning News?

LG: I’m really loving it. I’m new to Dallas. The first time I came here really was for this internship. I'm from the central Texas region and I also lived along the south Texas border for a while and so moving to north Texas has been different. But it’s really exciting. It's different culturally and demographically. And also, it’s different just because the sheer size of the D.F.W region (Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington Metropolitan Area) is massive. It's been really exciting to be here because it's a really happening place, a lot of things happen here in terms of national interest. We have a lot of big events and a lot of big sporting teams as well. It's really cool to be in a city and covering topics that the rest of the nation is also interested and curious about. The photo team here is remarkable and it's really wonderful to work with such a diverse group of people in the newsroom.

YH: Can you get give suggestions to college photojournalist for future? 

LG: Some people get this advice a lot, but I really do think it's the best. It's just starting your own backyard. I didn't get an internship my first year at graduate school and everybody else did. I was panicking. I'm going to be so behind. I don't have an internship. It’s so bad on my resume. So the first summer of grad school I stopped in a collective myself and I thought to myself, “Ok, what do you want to be doing.” What I really wanted to do I wanted to go back to the south Texas border and work on my own project that I was interested in. So that's what I did.

I moved back to the border for that summer and I spent my weekends at the beach and during the week I got up – I had a job and I had an internship – and I would work really hard at this project that nobody was telling me to do and I was just curious and interested in. I built a lot of connections in the community along the border and did a photo essay last summer about the colonials in South Texas. Those are a little under developed communities that don't have a lot of access to infrastructure and water services and city services in the city because it's so far out of the city limits. I got to meet a lot of wonderful people and I got to learn a lot more about myself and my own pace without having to be in the formal structure of an internship.

So my advice is if there's a story that you're interested in, just go do it. You don't need any permission to do it. It actually looks better. It's a better reflection of you if you just get up and do it yourself because it shows you're self-starter and you're interested in that theme. It’s the passion come to leading you not because someone comes to tell you go do the story. So that’s my best advice for college students, start doing stories that matter to you because that will reflect really well what you need you find censorship. That will also be the key to unlocking some of the bigger opportunities. So after I did that self-started project. That's what I use to show future editors and that's how I started getting internships because they had a big project that I worked on my own and that was impressive by itself.

Every year, we have a cohort of MU students who graciously donate their time to helping run the back end of the competition. They get coffee and tea for judges, hand out snacks, read captions, call ins and outs, take pictures and operate the sound board. Here they are at this year's training day, which always happens the day before judging starts!

Photos by Liv Paggiarino and India Garrish

Two buttons to rule them all: these are the remotes that judges will be using to vote in or out on each image and story they see this week. (By Liv Paggiarino)

Student volunteers gain the training necessary to fulfill their duties throughout the week, which include reading captions, calling ins and outs, operating the sound system and providing judges with snacks and (most importantly) caffeine! (By Liv Paggiarino)

MU senior and social media volunteer India Garrish smiles while going through images to post for the day. #Meta (By Liv Paggiarino)

CPOY Coordinator Anto Tavitian shows student volunteers how to operate the in-and-out voting machine during training Saturday. (By Liv Paggiarino)

MU graduate student Lexi Deagan explains to undergraduate volunteer Liz Goodwin how to operate the soundboard during volunteer training Saturday. (By Liv Paggiarino)

We design and make our own buttons here at CPOY; it's tradition! (By India Garrish)

"Don't ever hit 'save' on this," Anto says while explaining how to read captions of entries during volunteer training Saturday. "You'll make me very sad if you do."* (By Liv Paggiarino)

*No images were harmed in this training. There is one computer that we ask our volunteers not to save anything on, because they aren't making any changes to the files but other computers are.

During CPOY week, the building's staff graciously shares some fridge space with us so that we can provide food and beverages to judges. (By Liv Paggiarino) 

MU student volunteers Elizabeth Underwood and Sammy Snyder peek into the fridge that'll hold beverages for judges during volunteer training on Saturday. (By Liv Paggiarino)

MU student volunteer Joel Chan stands in the break room while going through training to make coffee for judges. (By Liv Paggiarino)

MU graduate student volunteer Jessi Dodge tests the microphone during volunteer training and setup on Saturday. (By Liv Paggiarino)