A moment in time: Rotary magazine's 2025 Photo Awards

A moment in time: Rotary magazine’s 2025 Photo Awards

Sparks fly as Rotary members focus their cameras and freeze-frame the wonders of the world

It is one of photography’s most memorable images. In Paris, behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, a man leaps across a large puddle. He’ll never make it all the way across, but in that split second before splashdown, he hangs in midair, his scissored legs reflected in the water beneath him. The man who captured the image called that split second the “decisive moment.” Except that he didn’t.

In 1952, the French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson published a collection of his work under the title Images à la Sauvette: images on the run. His U.S. publisher didn’t like that title; instead, it turned to the epigraph, from the 17th-century memoirist Cardinal de Retz, that preceded the book’s introductory essay: Il n’y a rien en ce monde qui n’ait un moment décisif. There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment.

Cartier-Bresson didn’t care for the English title The Decisive Moment, especially after the phrase came to define him. Yet it did accurately reflect what he’d said elsewhere — “photography can fix eternity in a moment” — and it has become a touchstone for generations of photographers.

That might include the Rotarians featured this year in the magazine’s annual Photo Awards. A waterspout swirls above a red-roofed Adriatic town; a shower of sparks explodes over a Midwestern festival; a white-tusked warthog makes its own leap across a water-filled trench in Botswana. Each of them un moment décisif.

Cartier-Bresson also asked, “What is more fleeting than the expression on a human face?” For the answer, see this year’s winning People of Action photo: two Rotarians fixed in sublime rapport — life preserved in the act of living, as the French photographer so decisively described such moments.

Winner

Eric Strand, Rotary Club of Fergus Falls Sunrise, Minnesota

**Blaze of glory:** In the little town of Rollag, a few miles southeast of Fargo, North Dakota, folks gather every Labor Day weekend for the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Reunion. At the nocturnal “spark show,” sawdust and wood chips are fed into the firebox of an antique steam-powered tractor, and the fiery explosion that follows etches cascades of gold into the night sky.

Winner, People of Action

John Butterfield, Rotary Club of Dublin-Worthington, Ohio

**Hands across the water:** Twenty-five years ago, the Rotary Club of Dublin-Worthington, Ohio, established a partnership with the Rotary Club of Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. Together the clubs worked to help families and students from impoverished neighborhoods in Santiago. Last October, a delegation from the Ohio club traveled to Santiago. There, Dave Hansen (left) visited with 102-year-old Moris Tallaj, a past governor of District 4060 and longtime member of the Santiago club. The two men, who had helped initiate the partnership, held hands for most of the emotional 30-minute reunion.

Honorable mention

**The luminaries:** Against the backdrop of the Milky Way, Maine’s West Quoddy Head Lighthouse lights up the night from its perch on the easternmost point of the U.S. mainland. The station was established in 1808, and the current lighthouse dates to 1858, as does the lightkeeper’s residence, which offers a welcoming, multicolor illumination all its own.

**David Morze,** Spouse of Linda Rose, Rotary Club of Ellsworth, Maine

**A little child shall lead them:** In Nepal’s Gandaki province, a young student takes her turn affixing a screw into one of the panels adorning the peace pole donated to the Shree Barahi Primary School by the Rotary Club of Hall, Australia. Working with the Reach for Nepal Foundation, the Hall club helped rebuild several schools in central Nepal, constructing earthquake-resistant classrooms and installing water and sanitation upgrades.

**Chris Edwards,** Rotary Club of Hall, Australia

**Polychromatic pulchritude:** Outside Jaipur, India, four colorfully garbed women enjoy the view from Amer Palace, a 400-year-old fortress with temples, a grand hypostyle hall, and the raja’s luxurious residence. Along with other fortresses in India’s Rajasthan state, Amer Palace was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2013.

**Maureen McGettigan,** Rotary Club of Valley of the Moon (Santa Rosa), California

**Twist and spout:** As blue skies battle with black clouds, a waterspout rises up in the channel of water that separates the island of Korčula and Croatia’s Pelješac Peninsula. As water temperatures increase, the Adriatic Sea is rising and experiencing more frequent extreme weather events, including droughts and heavy rainfalls.

**Elizabeth Cruft-Anderson,** Rotary Club of Lake Oswego, Oregon

**Pigasus:** In Botswana’s Okavango Delta, a warthog leaps over a water-filled trench. The delta’s marshlands and flooded plains provide a haven for some of the world’s most threatened species, including cheetahs, black rhinoceroses, lions, and African wild dogs. Though not currently endangered, warthog populations are diminishing due to habitat loss, droughts, and poaching.

**David Burke,** Rotary Club of Keller, Texas

**Upon the wings of silence:** With its dramatic cliffs, lush pine forest, and Pacific Ocean vistas, Gleneden Beach has some of the most stunning scenery on Oregon’s central coast. But when Mom’s waving a wand doused in magical suds, there’s no more enchanting sight than gossamer bubbles floating blithely above the sodden sand beach.

**Rick Rogoway,** Rotary Club of Clackamas, Oregon

**Divine guidons:** Prayer flags hang from the trees at the Sacred Garden in Lumbini, Nepal, the traditional birthplace of Buddha and a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1997.

**Michael Morrissey,** Rotary Club of Novato, California

**Aurora khmerealis:** People gather at sunrise to welcome the new day at Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Originally built to honor the Hindu deity Vishnu, the 900-year-old temple, revered today as a Buddhist shrine, is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the largest religious complex in the world.

**Danilo Salcedo,** Rotary Club of Richmond Sunrise, British Columbia

**Ship shape:** On 24 July 2024, Typhoon Gaemi hit Taiwan with winds exceeding 125 miles per hour. The storm drove this Cameroonian freighter aground on Dapeng Bay, on Taiwan’s southwestern coast, where it sat for almost two months before resuming its journey. During that time it became a local tourist attraction, though on this murky evening, its sole visitor is a solitary child.

**Keyman Hsieh,** Rotary Club of Tainan Cherng-Ta, Taiwan

**A shaman's benediction:** In Palmarejo, a batey, or settlement, in the Dominican Republic, a village elder blessed an extensive Builders Beyond Borders school project and spoke to the U.S. high school students volunteering there. Most residents of the settlement are Haitian immigrants or their descendants and often work as sugarcane cutters.

**Anthony Riggio,** Rotary Club of Westport, Connecticut

**Last word:** “I live in Ventura, California, near the Vandenberg Space Force Base, and I follow the space program throughout the year. I was preparing to photograph a launch from my house when I saw a praying mantis on my telephoto lens. Evidently he was a space enthusiast too. He sat there for a few minutes watching the evening and allowing me to take his picture. Stay calm and enjoy your life with whatever creatures choose to be with you.”

**John Brant,** Rotary Club of Ventura, California

This story originally appeared in the June 2025 issue of Rotary magazine.