By Jim Patrico, Awards Committee Co-Chair
Christine McClintic, who has managed the Photo Awards program for the last 18 years, announced her retirement from those duties.
Chris has had a profound impact on that contest. In fact, she helped re-invent it. When she took over, the contest had only recently transitioned from print entries to slide entries. She embraced that “new” format and made the judging process run smoothly. Later, she did the same with the transition from slide entries to digital entries.
Originally, too, judging was a live and in-person event. Chris arranged to have judges come to the Kansas City area and make their decisions at various locations over the years…including her home. The judging now has become an online event, and Chris also helped make that transition become nearly seamless.
The chronology of the contest sounds straightforward and maybe even simple. It was not. Chris spent countless hours organizing, tinkering and re-arranging. She answered phone calls from panicked photographers who couldn’t remember if they had made their entries correctly. She found and hired a list of top notch judges. And she emailed and called photo awards committee members about rules definitions, new categories and questions about whether certain odd entries even qualified for the contest.
All of this is to say that Chris has been indispensible to AAEA for 18 years and deserves a sincere thank you from the Board.