Pictures of the Day: Bangladesh and Elsewhere

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Photos from Bangladesh, Syria, Texas and France.

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Caught Cold When Sochi Freezes Over

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A few hours before President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke at a ceremony in the Bolshoy Ice Dome in Sochi in February, marking a year to the start of the 2014 Winter Olympics, I was watching pensioners strip to the waist and bask in the midday sunshine on a beach a few miles from the Olympic Park.

Sochi offers a delicious respite from the cold of Russia. For a Moscow resident like me, the city is a luscious feast of green, with no hint of winter on its palm-lined avenues even as snow blankets the capital.

James Hill for The New York Times At the luge track in Krasnaya Polyana, part of the Mountain Cluster for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

The idea of the Winter Olympics, the first Winter Games to take place in a subtropical zone, seems ambitious, as is the price tag. The combined cost of the Olympic sites and the infrastructure projects supporting them is set to make these Games history’s most expensive. Everywhere you look, something enormous is being built at a furious pace.

Leaving the Olympic Park and the Black Sea and heading up a cliff-lined valley for 30 miles brings one to the ski resorts, where the Alpine events will be staged. There was not much snowfall there this winter. Only after boarding a gondola to go up the mountain could one see the snow lying thickly on the men’s downhill course, covering its most dangerous point, a turn known, naturally enough, as Russian roulette.

James Hill for The New York Times Workers on the Bolshoy Ice Dome.

James Hill, who frequently shoots for The New York Times, is an award-winning photojournalist based in Moscow.

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The N.P.P.A.’s Best of Photojournalism

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The National Press Photographers Association announced the winners of its 2013 Best of Photojournalism contest on Tuesday.

For the second year in a row, David Weatherwax of The Herald, of Jasper, Ind., was named photojournalist of the year for smaller markets. R. J. Sangosti of The Denver Post was the 2013 photojournalist of the year for larger markets, followed by Damon Winter and Tyler Hicks of The New York Times.

The prestigious Cliff Edom “New America” Award was given to Aaron Huey for his picture story “In the Shadow of Wounded Knee,” which was featured on Lens last August and published in National Geographic magazine.

Mr. Sangosti’s winning portfolio included coverage of the Aurora movie theater shooting as well as a photo essay on a prison hospice patient. Mr. Weatherwax’s newspaper in southern Indiana has a circulation of less than 12,000 but has published a documentary photo essay every Saturday for the last 34 years.

Adrees Latif of Reuters won first place in the general news category and first and second place in the domestic news picture story category.

Melissa Lyttle of The Tampa Bay Times won the best published picture story, larger markets category for a story on a pair of twins from Clearwater, Fla., one of whom has severe mental and physical disabilities.

R.J. Sangosti/The Denver Post Lisa Alba’s family forced her to sit and rest outside her home in Chivington, Colo., after she returned from the hospital. Ms. Alba was thrown from her home when a tornado passed through the night before.

In the photo editing competition, The Los Angeles Times won team honors for newspaper picture editor of the year. Mark Edelson of The Palm Beach Post was the 2013 newspaper picture editor of the year.

Michele McNally and The New York Times did well in many of the photo editing awards, sweeping the newspaper recurring feature or series category with “Election 2012.” Ms. McNally also won first and second place for newspaper special section or reprint, and first place in the newspaper sports section front, newspaper sports project and newspaper illustrative single page categories.

Jamie Wellford, formerly of Newsweek, was named the magazine picture editor of the year. He took a buyout from Newsweek last year when it shut down its print editions. The award is a fitting recognition of Mr. Wellford’s enthusiastic support of photographers during his 11-year tenure at Newsweek. He is known for his warm embrace of both individual photographers and the photographic community.

“I have to thank all of the photographers, who devote so much of their life to what remains a compelling medium and who trusted me enough to show me their work,” he said.

As the magazine died a slow death over the last few years, Mr. Wellford had to fight many budget battles to be able to assign photographers to make original work. Toward the end, he said, he “lost too many of them.”

But Mr. Wellford is not pessimistic, nor is he sitting still. He teaches at the International Center of Photography and is involved in many projects, including “Screen,” described as a “collaborative platform for visual storytelling.”

“I still believe in the power of photography to tell the truth and provoke conversation, and I’m still devoted to the photography audience and community,” he said.

Aaron Huey/National Geographic Teenagers disregard the threat of a summer storm in Wounded Knee, S.D.

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