Bring them on, says ENR Senior Art Director Scott Hilling. Submit submissions now for ENR’s annual photo contest in time for the Nov. 18 deadline, as ENR looks forward to receiving what is likely to be at least 1,000 images depicting scenes from the last year of construction global Hilling, ENR editors and others hope each year to review the array of images.
As responsible for ENR’s cover and interior page design, Hilling creates the unique look and feel of each issue, using many images supplied by his readers. Their responsibilities also include purchasing or commissioning photographs, using processing software and ensuring that images comply with attribution, licensing and copyright rules.
Hilling has managed eight previous photo contests in his nine years as senior art director, including guiding industry judges through the difficult task of sorting through submitted photographs into the top dozen images to appear in a special issue of the magazine, and then choose several. candidates from which readers can select a cover through an online poll. He says he finds the experience uniquely stimulating, regarding the presentations as a visual report on the construction industry.
“I’m really excited to see what’s happening in the industry each year, what the employees are doing and seeing, and all the creativity that comes out of the photographers,” he says. For Hilling, the photos serve as a kind of artistic referendum that guides his selection and layout of the special issue. “I’m always excited about where the images will take us each year because after going through the first few hundred, there’s usually a theme that emerges.”
More entries offer more clues about what submitting photographers and their subjects see and feel. “One year, the presentations were full of structures with interesting shapes. Another year, the photos were full of workers,” Hilling said. In 2020, “the images told the story of the industry’s journey through the pandemic,” he added.
The basics are simple. ENR is asking its viewers who take photographs, whether they are professionals hired by companies in the industry or hobbyists on a job site, using any type of equipment, to submit their best project and work-related photos. See specific contest submission details at ENR.com/photocontest. For Hilling, a deluge of communications is uplifting, not overwhelming. “Just show up,” he says. “The more the merrier and the better judge.”
