Three Tri-City Herald photographers earned awards in the Washington-Oregon Associated Press Photo Contest and two Herald reporters were praised for their series of stories on public records.

The awards were announced at the annual meeting of the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association in Tacoma.

The Herald competed in the nonmetro division, which is for papers with a daily circulation under 50,000.

Photo Editor Bob Brawdy placed second and Kai-Huei Yau third in the features category.

Paul T. Erickson placed second in sports photography.

And Yau placed second in both the news and portrait categories.

Reporters John Trumbo and Kristi Pihl were praised by the judges of the Ted Natt First Amendment Award. Competition was open to newspapers in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Utah and Montana that are members of The Associated Press.

The winning entry was from the Salt Lake Tribune, but the judges singled out the Herald for its entries.

Trumbo and Pihl wrote a two-part series on people who file public records requests, the challenge to agencies to answer those requests and the costs.