Project Imaginat10n picks 3 from Austin

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Three Austinites are among the finalists in director Ron Howard's photo contest called "Project Imaginat10n." The project's winning photos will form the basis of inspiration for future short films to be created, based on the final entries.

David Pritchard's photo, "Plague Doctor Mask Portrait," is competing in the Character theme division. Emily Hunteman's image, "Angst," is placed in the Mood theme, and Kevin Vandivier's photograph, "Too High," was chosen for the Unknown theme.

Five other celebrity directors will join Howard to each select one additional photograph from the storytelling categories that personally inspire them, ultimately using 10 photos to represent their creativity and imagination.

The other directors include actress Eva Longoria, Academy-Award winner Jamie Foxx, Georgina Chapman (designer and co-founder of Marchesa), James Murphy (founder of LCD Soundsystem) and Biz Stone (co-founder of Twitter).

The different categories include Backstory, Time, Character, Relationshiop, Mood, Setting, Goal, Obstacle, Unknown and Discovery.

The photo "Unparralled" by Jennifer Harris of New Orleans, chosen to represent the category Discovery across all of the 10 short films, was selected by Howard on Monday.

“I am so passionate about the integrity and user-generated process of ‘Project Imaginat10n’ where our celebrity directors can be directly inspired by photographers from all across the country,” said Howard. “As we selected the photographs, I was blown away by the beauty, perspective and intrigue that they conveyed, and was thrilled that so many people wanted to once again take part in this exciting artistic experiment.”

The 91 winners of the photo contest span in age from 16 to 67 years old and are from across the country.  The public voted on the hundreds of submissions to narrow the field to the 90 entries that remain from which 10 will be chosen by the directors.

The contest was sponsored by Canon USA.