Cincinnati resident Allison Rotella has always had a passion for bridges. Naturally, she jumped at the chance to win a trip to the top of the John A. Roebling Bridge the first time she heard about the Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee’s annual Roebling Bridge photo contest.
“I am a civil engineer by degree and love buildings, love bridges, have always been fascinated by them,” Rotella said. “So I have loved the Roebling Bridge. I’m a Cincinnati native; I’ve always admired it, and once I heard that there was actually a way to win a trip to the top, I was thrilled and immediately had to enter.”
Her excitement waned a bit when she lost her first go at the contest… and her second go. Finally, in 2019, her persistence paid off when one of her entries won in an amateur category.
“It was honestly a dream come true to be at the top,” Rotella said. “It was a beautiful sunset. A night in September, we got to be up there with a couple other photographers, some members of the Kentucky Transportation [Cabinet] and be up there for a couple hours just taking shots and hanging out.”
After winning, she decided to get more involved with the bridge committee, and today she serves as its vice president.
The Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee, or CCSBC, is a group of local volunteers dedicated to the preservation and upkeep of the Roebling Bridge. Founded in 1974 to coincide with the U.S. bicentennial, the committee’s original mission was to place American flags atop each of the bridge’s towers.
“The organization has been around for a long time, and the bridge is owned by the state of Kentucky,” said CCSBC Membership Director David Wetzel. “But all the decorative lighting and the flags on the bridge, are totally the responsibility of the Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee.”
In addition to maintaining the aesthetics of the bridge, the committee engages in committee outreach to keep the public informed on the bridge’s history as well as its historical and technological importance.
The photo contest is one the committee’s most important annual events. The pandemic and renovation closures have prevented the committee from holding the contest every single year, but this year’s contest has some new tricks up its sleeve to get people involved.
For one thing, this is the first year the contest will have youth categories for photographers 17 and younger. The committee also built out the contest’s “other” category for this year, which allows competitors to submit videos, drawings, paintings and even AI generated images of the bridge.
Adult winners get a free trip to the top of the bridge (the law prevents minors from going to the top), and youth winners will win a $100 prepaid Visa or gift card. People can submit their entries all throughout the month of July, at which point a panel of judges will select a group of about 20 finalists from each category. The public will then vote on the winners between Aug. 15 and Aug. 22.
One of the judges for the first round of entries in this year’s contest is Tony Wagner, who has won the contest in several of the professional categories over the years.
“About 20 years ago, when digital photography became prevalent, I started to up my equipment, and primarily to shoot my kids’ sporting events,” Wagner said. “And then that kind of evolved into landscape photography and then portrait and family photography, which I do a lot of at this point.”
He still tries to get shots of well-known regional landmarks whenever he can. As a professional and judge of the contest, he says that competitors are presented with a unique challenge.
“The bridge itself is so beautiful that it’s hard to take a bad picture of the bridge,” Wagner said, “but to take a unique picture of the bridge is the challenge.”
One way to do that, he said, is to photograph the bridge under unique conditions.
“As I look at past winners,… a lot of them deal with reflections in water or [a shot] during a snowstorm,” Wagner said.
“I think that’s not just true for bridge photography, but that’s true for photography in general,” Wagner adds, “is that people respond positively to unique views of things that they see every day.”
“Every year we’ve gotten more and more entrants,” Rotella said.
“It’s just a great way to get our name out there,” she added. “And honestly, the trip to the top is definitely the highlight. It’s why I got involved, for sure. Trust me; the view, there is nothing like it. It was a dream come true, and I stand by that years later.”
To learn more about the contest and see a gallery of past winners, visit the Covington-Cincinnati Suspension Bridge Committee’s contest page.