The National Park Service encourages all RVers and all Americans to participate in the Share the Experience Photo Contest
and join the ranks of Ansel Adams, Thomas Moran, and others who have
created masterpieces depicting the nation’s public lands. The photo
taken by the grand prizewinner will appear on a 2012 America the
Beautiful — National Parks and Federal Recreational Lands Pass. He or
she will receive a prize package that includes a trip for four to a
federal recreation area, photography equipment, and a pass to the
national parks and other federal lands for 2012. Second-, third-, and
fourth-place winners, and 10 Honorable Mention winners will also receive
prizes.
The contest runs through December 31, 2010. Amateur photographers can participate by uploading photos on www.sharetheexperience.org or through Facebook, Flickr, or Shutterfly to the contest website.
“We always encourage the American people to visit and experience
their national parks,” said National Park Service Director Jonathan
Jarvis. “We especially do so now, in the weeks before the Share the
Experience deadline. Photography is very much about seeing. Head to a
national park and really see it—through the lens of your camera.”
Few Americans live far from one of the country’s 393 national
parks. These protected places come in all sizes. They can be found in
cities (for example, Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San
Francisco) as well as in areas on which humans have had less impact.
They preserve natural features like the Everglades and the Grand Canyon
of the Yellowstone, and historic sites like Independence Hall and the
farm on which Abraham Lincoln lived as a boy and a young man.
Share the Experience—the official photo contest of America’s
national parks and federal recreational lands—is sponsored by Olympus,
a leader in precision technology and a maker of digital cameras and
other products that enhance customers’ lives every day, and the National Park Foundation,
the Congressionally chartered charity of America’s national parks.
Olympus and the National Park Foundation offer Share the Experience in
partnership with the National Park Service, the Bureau of Land
Management, the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, and the U.S. Forest Service.
The annual Share the Experience contest showcases the more than
500 million acres of federal lands and draws entries from all across the
United States. It is the largest national park and public land photo
contest for amateur photographers.
“We always tell people in parks to take only pictures and leave
only footprints,” said Neil Mulholland, President and CEO of the
National Park Foundation. “Our annual photo contest is a great reason to
get outside and capture the incredible places preserved in our national
parks.”
For contest rules and a complete list of prizes, please see www.sharetheexperience.org. For more about the National Park Service, visit www.nps.gov.
