The Center for Languages and Cultures and the Office of Overseas Studies held the award ceremony for their second annual Photo Contest for Students Studying Abroad on Wednesday. Students from selected study abroad programs could submit photos in four categories: Nature, People, Culture and Cities.

The ceremony was held in the Center for Languages and Cultures, which was warmly decorated for the winter holidays. Winners, guests, judges and faculty gathered, milling around the winning photographs displayed on the wall, while a slideshow featuring all submissions played on several televisions around the space.

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The Center for Languages and Cultures, located on the third floor of Taper Hall, provided a casual and welcoming environment that suited the award ceremony well. An open space with a mixture of tables, chairs and private spaces, the love of language was clear from the signage — which all displayed at least two languages — to the shelves housing board and card games in many languages.

In some conversations, guests flowed back and forth between languages, professors practicing with their students while snacking on provided sweets.

Two Language Ambassadors were also present. Language Ambassadors are USC students “who share their language learning experiences with local high school students and their families,” according to the Center for Languages and Cultures website.

“This event … was with the intention of creating a bit more of a community inside [the university],” said Mercedes Fages Agudo, the chair of the community outreach group at the COC, “and to get a chance to have those students come in together, talk about their experience and maybe encourage all the students to do programs abroad.”

Although most students who received awards did not attend the event, the sense of community was strong. Attendees stood in a large circle while the prizes were presented, listening as recipients shared memorable moments from their time abroad. The winning photos reflected the wide range of the students’ experiences.

Photos in the City category ranged from local to iconic. The winning photo, submitted by Madeleine Tozer, welcomes the viewer into a cozy courtyard in Strasbourg as snow begins to fall. There is a sense of casual wonder in the photo, an everyday environment that is likely new and exciting to the viewer but is unremarkable to the people who walk through the street.

The fourth place winner in the City category, submitted by Talitha Newsom Callan, in contrast, is a photo of Marina Bay Sands in Singapore, a resort instantly recognizable for the cruise ship suspended across its three skyscrapers. This is a sight remarkable to both tourists and locals, reflecting a different perspective and experience from the photographer.

The Culture and Nature categories had similarly diverse winners. The Nature category captured subjects as small as a frog balanced on the tip of a leaf to majestic mountain peaks. The Culture category was the farthest reaching, showcasing people in traditional clothing in Taiwan, architecture in Paris, Taiwanese snail fishing and a stone memorial in Martinique. 

In the People category, the winning photograph, submitted by Skye Dizon, showcases a line of people riding camels through sand dunes at golden hour. The photograph is immediately recognizable as a photo taken abroad, while it also carries a sense of distance, separating the viewer from the scene and the camel riders.

The second prize winner in the same category, submitted by Marissa Briones, is a black and white photo of two people in a cafe in France. One person reaches over a table and cups the other’s face with their hands while they both smile and laugh. Nothing in the photo would immediately inform a viewer that it was taken outside of the United States, but its intimacy creates a sense of connection with the people in its distant setting.

“There’s certain qualities that you’re looking for, lighting, color sense, angles, composition, lights and darks, there’s all that. But aside from that you’re looking for a narrative, a piece that’s telling a story. It doesn’t need to be literal, but it draws you in and … that’s what kind of holds you with that image,” said Clare Hebert, a guest judge and fine artist.

Three winners were present to accept their awards. One winner present, Isaac Millians, a junior majoring in international relations, had two winning photographs. Millians received first place in the Culture category for “Gods and Buses,” which depicts a group of Taiwanese performers in traditional clothing exiting a bus.

“It was a very nice mix of traditional and modern,” Millians said. “They were having a festival in the streets [of Tainan City], and people were parading. They were just getting off a bus, after putting on their costumes. So they were heading toward the performance. So you had the nice mix of these people in very traditional, elaborate costumes next to people around them directing them and talking in walkie-talkies.”

Millians also received fourth place in the Nature category for his piece “Bird in Thought,” which displays a bird sitting by a river with a bridge and buildings in the background.

“For the Nature category, it’s still a very urban environment,” Millians said. “A lot of my photos are of random birds, so that one was taken by a pond, and the lighting was really nice.”

Audrey Schreck, a sophomore majoring in cinema and media studies and East Asian languages and cultures, was another winner who attended the award ceremony. Her photograph “Snail Fishing in Rural Taiwan” received second place in the Culture category.

“College is about learning and trying new things,” Schreck said. “[I] made a lot of friends, made a lot of good memories, learned a lot about Taiwan … Learning about the culture in a way that’s actually interesting is very fun.”