Gregg Stallings has been named president of MediaVast's newly formed WireImageStock. Stallings spent the last three years as director of sales and service for the Americas at Corbis. Prior to that, he was at the Image Bank and Pictor International in Los Angeles.

Seattle-based nature photographer Jon Cornforth won the grand prize in the 2004 Vancouver International Mountain Film Festival's Photography Competition for his image, "Bishop Petroglyph at Sunrise." Another of his entries, "Paradise Wild-flowers," placed second in the Mountain Landscape category.

Cornforth's petroglyph image also was selected for exhibition in PhotoMedia's "World in Focus" contest in 2003, under the Landscape category.

The nature photography community lost two of its most prominent role models earlier this year. In February, venerable nature photographer Erwin Bauer died of bone marrow cancer at his home in Sequim, Wash. Erwin's death was followed a month later by that of his wife and artistic partner, Peggy, who was killed in a car accident on March 23.

Following his graduation from the University of Cincinnati, Erwin served in World War II, for which he was awarded the...

Michael Riedel, a faculty member at the Art Institute of Seattle, was awarded the Photoshop Guru Award in the Photography category at the 2004 Photoshop World Conference. Riedel specializes in fashion photography and teaches digital manipulation and photography classes.

Steven Fey, a Seattle-based photographer, has opened a gallery in the city's Belltown district. The opening show, "Coastal Beauty," features color and black-and-white images taken by Fey in the wilderness coastal areas of the Pacific Northwest and California.

Randy Harris, a photographer based in Bellevue, Wash., recently was named the grand-prize winner of the Ritz Camera National Photo Contest for his close-up photograph of an Alaskan grizzly bear shaking water from its head. Harris' work also has appeared in magazines, on television and in advertising campaigns.

John (Jake) Butler, a student at the Brooks Institute of Photography in Santa Monica, Calif., has been awarded top honors in two international photography contests.

The International Society of Photographers, in conjunction with the International Library of Photography and picture.com, presented Butler with the award for Outstanding Achievement in Amateur Photography in 2004 for his...

Geoffrey Hiller, a photographer based in Portland, Ore., has produced "Canto do Brasil," a multimedia presentation designed to build awareness of the country's current situation.

Through photography, narration, music and sounds from the streets of Brazil, viewers move through a visual depiction of four Brazilian cities: Salvador de Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

Collaborating with Hiller on the project were...

Commercial photographer Doug Walker, of Walker Photography in Olympia, Wash., won three top awards at the Professional Photographers of Washington Annual Educational Conference and Print Competition.

Walker received the Best Architectural and the Best Industrial print awards, as well as the C.C. Yang Trophy for highest total combined score from four entries.

Oscar Williams, a photographer and teacher who lives in Kirkland, Wash., recently won the grand prize in Smithsonian magazine's first photography contest. Williams' winning photograph is of a boy running up a tiled staircase in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.