The National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) is holding its annual Best of Photojournalism awards this week and Apple’s photography workflow application, Aperture, is playing a big role. The committee of judges started looking at images last Sunday morning and have worked from morning until night everyday to make it through all of the submissions. According to Terry Eiler, one of the judges on the panel, they looked through about 50,000 images so far.

Eiler told The Loop that the 50,000 still images were first organized into 60 categories and then they started looking through them. Pictures were labeled by the judges as they went through the category as “in” or “out,” meaning that the image moved on to the next round of judging or it was finished.

This is where the group utilized Aperture. The entire process of viewing and voting for images was done inside Aperture.

Source: NPPA — St. Petersburg Times photojournalist Keri Wiginton uses Aperture 3 to show selected images to the judges at the NPPA Best of Photojournalism judging week at the Poynter Institute, St. Petersburg, FL.

“The thing Aperture does best is organizing files,” said Eiler. “Aperture also allows you to keep your original picture and data, even after making edits.”

As the Director of the School of Visual Communication at Ohio University, Eiler is very familiar with Aperture. He said they use the application at the school to teach students how to better manage their photos and their time.

He said that once students get the hang of Aperture, they can focus more of their attention on the creativity of taking pictures and less time on organization.

All of the winners of this years National Press Photographers Association’s Best of Photojournalism can be found on the organization’s Web site.