Category: Photo Contest

We had a number of excellent submissions for this year’s Carolina Angles photo contest, leading to some fierce competition! We are excited to announce three winners of this year’s contest – Ruby Brinkerhoff, Duncan Richey, and Josephine Jeni Justin. Check out their photographs below, along with their own words about its connection to planning.

Ruby’s winning photo will also be featured in Volume 47 of the Carolina Planning Journal, Planning for Healthy Cities, coming this spring. Thank you to everyone who participated, and congratulations to this year’s winners!

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1st Place Winner

Title: Winter Paradise: Pennsylvania winters in an old house with a wood stove
Medium: 35mm black & white film
Artist: Ruby Brinkerhoff

As we stand with this woman in front of a large pile of firewood in need of hauling, a winter landscape in rural Pennsylvania comes into focus. Planners often portray the aerial view, yet the view from above can obscure the realities that people experience on the ground. Both perspectives, aerial and eye-level, are valuable. Understanding the immediate experience of people’s daily lives is a useful and necessary balance to the professional aesthetics and values we impose from a conceptual distance.

Ruby Brinkerhoff is a second-year Master’s student in the Department of City and Regional Planning. Ruby specializes in land use and environmental planning, with a sustained interest in food systems, climate change, and equitable access to resources. Ruby received a dual bachelor’s degree from Guilford College in Biology and Religious Studies. She loves playing music, exploring North Carolina, and all things botanical.

2nd Place Runner-Up

Title: Snowbird, Utah
Medium: 35mm color film
Artist: Duncan Richey

Little Cottonwood Canyon is home to Alta and Snowbird (pictured), two premier ski resorts that, according to some, boast “the greatest snow on Earth.” However, as nearby Salt Lake City’s population and its mountains’ popularity has grown, so has its traffic problem. The highly contentious debate to mitigate traffic in Little Cottonwood Canyon surrounds two options: a $592-million, 8-mile gondola or $510 million for enhanced bus service with a wider road.
Gondola supporters describe it as a cleaner, avalanche-proof solution that entirely avoids the treacherous road that is often clogged with traffic. Supporters of increased bus service worry that what they believe is the commonsense solution — the bus route– is getting lost in the gondola hype. The gondola, if completed, would make it the longest in the world.
Others, like Salt Lake County Mayor Jenny Wilson, ask if either solution is necessary. “I question whether we need a public investment to support two ski resorts,” said Mayor Wilson. “Might we be better off to just work with the Forest Service to put in some limits and accept that there’s 10 days a year when the snow is really coming down, the risk is too high and we just close the resorts? That, to me, is a better alternative.”
However, big changes to the canyon appear inevitable. The public comment period recently concluded on January 10, 2022 and the Utah Department of Transportation is expected to issue a final recommendation early this year.

Duncan Richey is a first-year Master’s candidate in the Department of City and Regional Planning. His academic interests include active transportation and the relationship between mental health and the built environment. When he isn’t busy with school, Duncan enjoys skiing and shooting film photography.

3rd Place Runner-Up

Title: Beach Nourishment in Florida
Medium: iPhone
Artist: Josephine Jeni Justin

Over winter break, I visited Miami, Florida. This picture was taken at the Dr. Von D. Mizell-Eula Johnson State Park where a beach nourishment project was underway. The project involved placing approximately 135,000 cubic yards of sand along 7.2 miles of critically eroded shoreline from the Port Everglades Inlet south along the State Park and along the beaches of Dania, Hollywood, and Hallendale. A wider and higher beach can provide storm protection for coastal structures, create new habitat, and enhance the beach for recreation.

Josephine Jeni Justin is a first year Master’s of City and Regional Planning student at UNC Chapel Hill concentrating in Land Use and Environmental Planning and is pursuing the Natural Hazards Resilience Certificate. She immigrated to the United States from Tamil Nadu, India as a kid and her family currently lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. In her free time, Josephine enjoys reading, traveling, and learning graphic design and sewing. After graduating she hopes to pursue a career in disaster management and coastal resiliency in California.

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Looking for another opportunity to share your work? Submit to the CPJ Cover Photo contest!

The Carolina Planning Journal is now accepting submissions for the cover photo of this year’s journal, and we’d love to feature your image! Submissions should be related to this year’s journal theme, Planning for Healthy Cities. Examples of previous cover images can be found at the journal’s online repository. If your photo is selected for the cover, you will receive $100 for the rights to use it in the journal as well as photo attribution.

To enter submit your high-resolution (min. 300 dpi) photo to carolinaplanningjournal@gmail.com with the subject “CPJ Cover Photo Submission,” along with a brief explanation of how your image relates to the journal’s theme. Contact the Journal with any further questions.