The Hammond Downtown Development District encourages the community to represent downtown with a photo for the 2018 “Hot August Night” poster contest.

“We usually host contests in order to get the community involved in our events and get them excited,” said Administrative Assistant for the DDD Olivia Graziano. “Events like ‘Hot August Night’ only work because the community gets so invested in it, so being able to feature a community member’s photograph on the poster only adds to that investment.”

The contest opened on March 1 and ends on March 31. The 23rd annual “Hot August Night” is scheduled for Aug. 24. 

Graziano compared this year’s poster contest to past ones.

“Last year, we did an art contest for the poster, which was great and unique,” said Graziano. “But we decided to go back to some features from the beginnings of the ‘Hot August Night’ event including having original photography on the poster. We figured that photos instead of drawings or other renderings would attract more people to enter as well.”

The guidelines for the contest asked for “photos that represent downtown Hammond or ‘Hot August Night.’”

“There are no written stipulations for what exactly the photograph should be,” said Graziano. “We just encouraged using some aspects of downtown or the community as inspiration. There will probably be some unique perspectives gained through all the entries in the end.”

Photo submissions can be sent to [email protected], or contestants can go to the DDD office.

“The winner of the contest will be selected by the DDD Board of Directors at the April board meeting, April 1,” said Graziano. “From there, the DDD team will create the rest of the poster and release both the full poster and the winner of the contest towards the end of April.”