At the Wyoming Outdoor Council, we’ve been thinking a lot about home lately. Where are the places we find it? Where are the places we choose to establish it? How do we continue to create a sense of it, expand it, and invite others into it? What happens when home isn’t so much a place with walls around it and a roof on top of it, as so many clichés say, but a feeling of belonging? A sharing of a broad sense of space with other humans, and also animals and other living things? What happens when home is felt in — or only for — a moment?
You may have heard that the Outdoor Council is moving “homes” soon from a small, old, cramped office building to another new, energy-efficient, inviting building down the street in Lander. We are excited for a forever home to continue the conservation advocacy work we do in Wyoming. We will welcome other organizations and groups in our community to use this space for meetings.
However, as an organization that operates statewide, we know that our home is bigger and broader than just Lander and just our staff and board — our home is Wyoming and all the people, places, and things that encompass it. There are landscapes we’ve bonded with and worked to protect and wildlife sightings we seek in the change of seasons. There is a familiarity with the first flowers that bloom on our favorite trails in the spring, or a deepening awareness of when the first frost usually hits our gardens. There’s the way summer feels on our skin, the sound of birds migrating south.
In this broad way, we hope that using the word “home” puts us on a common ground of understanding when we say “our Wyoming” is the enduring theme for our annual calendar contest.
Each year, we look to the calendar to tell a story about the home we’ve all chosen to make, create, keep, and defend in this state, and the ways in which we intentionally build that home. The bricks, beams, and foundations all look very different from person to person, and we always enjoy seeing the ways in which our members experience Wyoming — how you construct the scaffolding of your values in this state. The tradition of the calendar continues this year and we hope that you’ll help us strengthen the story of Our Wyoming by sharing photos of the ways in which you experience this place you call home — whether that’s been for millennia through your ancestors, for the length of your life, for a few days, or even hours. We love seeing you and friends out enjoying our state and city parks, or a place you’ve sought for solitude and silence, or the majesty of our free-roaming wildlife, or future generations of outdoor lovers (kids!) immersed in a scene.
WHAT’S NEW THIS YEAR
What is different this year about the calendar contest is that we’ve coupled it with both photographer prizes as well as the chance to be featured in an exhibition at the Cheyenne Creativity Center this fall!
All photographers who are featured in the calendar will receive a cash prize and will have their photographs printed and hung in an exhibit that will run through November 2023. Honorable mentions will also have their photos hung in the exhibit. More details are below and will be provided upon request and during the announcement of the winners. Good luck, we’re looking forward to seeing your photos of #OurWyoming!
TERMS & CONDITIONS
Entries must be submitted between July 15, 2023, and before midnight on September 15, 2023, either via email (claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org) or Instagram, using the hashtag #OurWyoming. By entering, all contestants agree to release their photo to the Wyoming Outdoor Council for publication in our calendar and supporting social media. The Outdoor Council, along with guest judge Desirée Brothe, the public art coordinator of the Cheyenne Creativity Center, will select the winning photos, which will be published in the 2023 calendar. Thanks to support from First Interstate Bank in Cheyenne, selected artists will receive a modest cash award for photos included in the calendar, and honorable mentions. All photographers chosen to be in the calendar and honorable mentions will also have their work exhibited throughout November at the Cheyenne Creativity Center. WOC will be responsible for the printing and display of work at no cost to artists. An exhibit reception will take place on November 3 during Cheyenne’s First Friday Artwalk. All submitted photos are subject to use both in the calendar and the exhibit; however, if you would not like to participate in the exhibit, please email claire@wyomingoutdoorcouncil.org.
Your entry to the contest constitutes your agreement to allow your entered photographs, as well as your name and the place the photograph was taken, to be published in the Wyoming Outdoor Council’s 2023 calendar and on the Outdoor Council’s website, in emails, and social media channels to promote the annual photo contest. It also constitutes your agreement to allow your winning photograph to be in the exhibit in Cheyenne unless otherwise communicated. Reproduction of entries will include the necessary photographer credit. Contest entrants retain ownership and all other rights to future use of the photographs they enter. Use of the entered photos in any other fashion or in any other publications will only occur with permission from the entrant.