Vote For Your Favorite Images From "Off the Beaten Path"

Local media company The Bulls of Durham (@thebullsofdurham on both Facebook and Instagram) put out a call earlier in this strange summer of 2020 for entries into a photo contest designed to push the popular imagery of our city beyond the usual icons.  In their own words:

"Show us something different. No photos of DBAP, ATC, and Old Bull. In fact, photos featuring any of these will be disqualified. No shade. We’re friends with everyone over there. It’s just been done, done, done, done."

At Open Durham we agree that while there's nothing wrong with a picture of these great landmarks, the Bull City and its surroundings have so much more to offer.  Pictures that our contributors have taken over decades, images volunteer researchers have uncovered in local archives, photographs that capture the complexity and diversity, timelessness and transformation of our communities are in many ways the heart and soul of this online archive.  Of course, the rules the organizers put together also understandably limited submissions to the actual authors of the images, and the timeframe to those taken in the last three years.

So rather than drawing on the wealth of fantastic, in many cases professionally produced photographs already on Open Durham, volunteer editor Nicholas Levy - a historian but certainly not a photographer - sifted through the hundreds of smartphone-snapped views he'd assembled in his explorations of both town and county.  He chose four images he felt spoke to his experiences learning about this place and its history, containing in-frame at least a part of the brief explanation entrants were required to provide about "why the photo is important to the narrative of Durham and what Durham means to them."

Prizes range from $50 to $500, and Nicholas has committed to splitting any (highly unlikely) winnings between two all-volunteer, non-profit organizations with whom he spends a lot of his time: the Friends of Geer Cemetery and Open Durham.

Click on the images below to link to the corresponding pages on The Bulls of Durham's contest site or here for its homepage to peruse all the fanastic Off the Beaten Path photos your fellow Durhamites contributed.

1. Unidentified Marker, Geer Cemetery (4.17.2020)

2. Broken Marker for Effie Mayo (1881-1912), Edge of East Durham Cemetery overlooking the new Regional Commerce Center (6.7.2020)

3. Golden Belt, Gutted (12.23.2017)

4. Little Lick Creek Boardwalk (1.19.2020)