Illinois Parks Recreation Magazine
2005 Photo Contest and Writing Award Winners

by Rodd Whelpley, Illinois Parks & Recreation magazine editor

For years in this state we've had a small controversy about whether to elect or appoint judges. The current wisdom is for the direct election of judges. And, as far as the Illinois court system goes, I won't waste space arguing the point here.

But, when it comes to our annual writing and photography awards, I am 100 percent in favor of appointing judges. Each year, I get too involved in stories that appear in the magazine to be able to step back and reasonably pick out only a few for special recognition. And, frankly, most of the 200 plus photos submitted in the 2005 "Give Us Your Best Shot" photo contest looked like winners to me. So, this year, with the blessing of the joint editorial committee, I brought in ringers for both contests.

For the writing awards, the judges included Dr. Nick DiGrino of Western Illinois University, Dr. Regina Glover of Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, and Robin Hall and Dr. Cynthia J. Wachter of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. When I asked for their help, I told them that their job would be hard, but that they couldn't go wrong, because all the articles were winners. Apparently, they agreed. For the first time, we awarded a tie, with two stories taking top honors in the Environment category.

This year's photo contest judge was Chris Young, an award winning nature photographer who is also the outdoors section editor for the State Journal-Register in Springfield. He offered a fresh perspective on the process. "You have a photo contest to self-analyze, so that people can see the kind of images that can be useful - not to pick the best picture of all time," he said. But after going through the images for a couple of hours he faced the dilemma common to all prior photo contest judges: "Almost all the pictures in the contest have good, important uses," he said. "I've run into very few that have such technical flaws that they couldn't be published. The contestants are serving your agencies very well by taking photos that let people know that people have fun coming to agency events." Still, I pressed him for a list of winners, and he did come up with one.

It wasn't easy.

It never is.

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