Hilling has managed eight previous photo contests in his nine years as senior art director, including guiding the industry judges in the difficult task of winnowing down submitted photos to the best several dozen images to appear in a special issue of the magazine—and then choosing several candidates from which readers can select a cover shot via an online poll. He says he finds the experience uniquely exhilarating, regarding the submissions as a visual report on the construction industry.

“I’m super excited to see what has been going on in the industry each year, what employees are doing and seeing, and all the creativity that pours out from the photographers,” he says. For Hilling, the photos serve as a kind of artistic referendum that guides their selection and the special issue layout. “I’m always excited about where the images are going to take us each year because after looking over the first few hundred, there is generally a theme that emerges.”

More entries offer more clues to what submitting photographers and their subjects are seeing and feeling. “One year, the submissions were full of interestingly shaped structures. In another, the photos were full of workers,” Hilling said. In 2020, “the images told the story of industry’s journey through the pandemic,” he added.

The basics are simple. ENR asks its picture-taking audience members, whether professionals hired by industry firms or amateurs on a jobsite, using equipment of any kind, to submit their best project and work-related photos. See specific contest submittal details at ENR.com/photocontest. For Hilling, a deluge of submissions is uplifting, not overwhelming. “Just submit,” he says. “The more the merrier and better to judge.”