The weather was hot, rainy, rotten. The assignments were almost sadistic in their demands and deadlines.

The competition was at the highest level of the all-around-photographer food chain. Yet Michael Soo prevailed. With his victory in Pop Photo’s Photographer of the Year 2005 Shoot-Out, this 32-year-old software engineer from Cupertino, California, proved several things:
You don’t need to be a pro.  You don’t need the most megapixels.
You don’t need to know the territory. Photoshop won’t clinch it for you.

PHOTOGRAPHER OF THE YEAR: MICHAEL SOO

Wing It: Michael Soo Brought his own props, including butterflies. He took one from the case and put it on the model's shoulders. "Are you okay with that?" he asked. "No!" she groaned. But with $5,000 and the title on the line, he kept it there. Michael's Gallery

Wielding an 8.2MP Canon EOS 20D, Soo beat two full-time pros—Andrei Jackamets of Howell, New Jersey, and Mike Peters of Verona, New Jersey, both 45, who were armed with a 12.4MP Nikon D2x and 16.6MP Canon EOS-1Ds Mark II, respectively.

As Soo showed, capturing the title of “The Best Shooter on the Planet” takes creativity, technical skill, and determination. In the three-day shoot-out, held in the scorching heat of mid-July Manhattan, the competition was fierce; the assignments, often grueling; and the photos taken by all three competitors, excellent.

Soo, Jackamets, and Peters were the finalists in this first-annual event, which was announced this past March. Photographers of all stripes were asked to send us four shots in specific categories; our editors selected the top 10 entries. Those 10 portfolios were posted on www.PopPhoto.com, where you, the readers, voted. The top three finishers were then invited to the all-expense-paid Shoot-Out, competing for the $5,000, winner-take-all Grand Prize, as well as a $1,000 assignment to shoot the cover of Pop Photo’s December issue. More than 800 photographers from around the world entered, and 35,764 votes were cast in the online balloting, with Jackamets, Soo, and Peters finishing in that order.

The shooters arrived in New York knowing only that they would come to the Pop Photo office each morning for three days and draw their assignments out of a hat. What these tasks would be, they had no idea. They soon discovered that Pop Photo’s editors had come up with assignments that were, as Jackamets put it, “diabolical.” (See the accompanying boxes for details.)

As the photographers hit the mean streets of New York, where the July temperatures rose to the mid-90s, it was clear that each had his own way of operating and his own style.