Keith Anglada
Albuquerque, N.M., Local 611

Keith Anglada, a journeyman inside wireman, was part of the crew working on a data center in Las Lunas, a city of 14,000 about 35 miles south of Albuquerque. He used his Motorola phone to capture foreman and fellow 611 member Jesus Olivas leading the lockout and tagout of a building before turning it over. Anglada said the picture was taken to serve as proof that the gear was locked out with those keys. “Even though we have permanent power installed, we have to maintain temporary power for certain scenarios so that when everything is turned off, we can still have power for vacuums, lightning chargers and so forth,” he said.

Misty Thomas
Anchorage, Alaska, Local 1547

Standing on a closed taxiway of a busy, active airport in Alaska can be as exciting as it is scenic. Last summer, third-year Anchorage Local 1547 apprentice Misty Thomas was part of a crew from CCI Electrical Services working on a multiyear runway renewal job at Ted Stevens International Airport. “It’s something to experience when a 747 flies right overhead,” Thomas said. With all this going on around her, the self-described “junior photographer” managed to capture this picturesque scene of journeyman Alex DeRocher and apprentice Cole Philips, working on a leg install, use a 10-foot stick of two-inch rigid as a cheater bar to help pry up a problematic and stubborn ground bushing.

Richard Przybylowicz
Southfield, Mich., Local 17

Southfield, Mich., Local 17 journeyman outside linemen Richard Przybylowicz was headed out for afternoon shift for utility DTE, which on Oct. 10 meant clocking in at 3:30 p.m. and clocking out at 7:30 the next morning. That’s a lot of opportunity to stare at the moon, and “I’d heard somewhere that there was some kind of a weird deal with the moon that night,” he said. It was a day after full, now “waning gibbous.” It meant that when he pulled up to the job — the primary had fallen off a pole near Newport, Mich.— he had his eye open for something special, something that might make his wife happy. “She’s an excellent photographer, and with the moon how it was and the field how it was, I just thought it was super cool,” he said. Her name is Sunshine, and she agreed that the picture of the moonshine was pretty cool.

Victor Lopez
New York City Local 3

Deep inside The New York Times’ printing plant in Flushing, Queens, New York Local 3 maintenance technician Victor Lopez finds beauty in the work that fellow technicians and electricians do around the clock to keep the presses running. While it’s “an everyday thing” for him after most of two decades on the job, wide-eyed tour groups remind him of the “level of wow” as they pass giant rolls of newsprint that are turned into 60,000 papers an hour. “Sometimes you just sit down and think about how amazing it all is,” he said. Here, he captures a print roll carrier crew inspecting machinery on the train tracks that move the 2,000-pound, 10-mile-long rolls. Lopez, a self-taught photographer, “went to YouTube University,” he said with a laugh. Always eager to learn more, he says he’s “like a kid in a candy store” with the photography videos he finds online.

Victor Lopez
New York City Local 3

Victor Lopez won a second slot among the finalists with this image of a Local 3 brother, journeyman electrician Lawrence Wright, doing routine maintenance on a high-voltage charger at The New York Times’ printing plant in Queens. A maintenance technician, Lopez typically works a swing shift at the plant, which operates 24/7 not only the Times but the New York Post, Wall Street Journal and other newspapers. Lopez began schooling himself in photography a decade ago and has become a serious hobbyist. He uses Sony equipment that he says is high-quality but more affordable than Canon and Nikon. He shot both finalist images with a mirrorless Sony Alpha 7 III camera with a prime (non-zoom) lens, a setup ideal for low-light situations. “While a good-quality phone can produce a good-quality picture, I know what I can get out of a camera,” he said

Paul Salgado
Diamond Bar, Calif., Local 47

Local 47 member Paul Salgado, a journeyman lineman and senior field media adviser for Sturgeon Electric, said he took this photo of fellow Local 47 member Alfredo Lamas, an equipment operator performing a garage repair order on the auger lock assembly on a digger derrick, to highlight the hard work and high quality of work that their fleet mechanics perform every day. “Alfredo has a reputation for being thorough, having a vast knowledge of his duties and being a dedicated craftsman,” Salgado said.

Ryan Shea
Orlando, Fla., Local 606

Following last September’s destruction across the southeastern U.S. caused by Hurricane Ian, members of several IBEW locals were called in to help with cleanup and recovery efforts that lasted for months. Ryan Shea, a seven-year member of Orlando, Fla., Local 606, was on hand for the first few weeks. “How big this thing was, was amazing,” Shea said of the storm. “When we got there, everything was underwater and we had to wait, and the only place to stay was two hours away.” An Army veteran who also teaches part time at his local’s joint apprentice training center, Shea brought his Canon camera along so he could document some of the devastation. In this photo, Shea captured one of the first forays by members of Local 606 and Jacksonsville, Fla., Local 177 onto Sanibel Island on Florida’s southwest coast — a trip that had to be taken by barge since the storm had collapsed the only bridge to and from the island.

Jennifer Rhinebeck
Vacaville, Calif., Local 1245

Jennifer Rhinebeck used a Canon DSLR to capture this photo of PG&E linemen Brian Olsen and Logan Crump reconductoring a newly set utility pole along a remote levee road in Pittsburg, Calif., in June 2022. The previous pole, along with many others, were destroyed in the Marsh fire, which burned for two months and destroyed nearly 200 acres in Contra Costa County. Rhinebeck often has her camera with her, both on and off the job. “I just want to show our brothers and sisters at work,” she said.

Corey Baum
Austin, Texas, Local 520

When Local 520 members were running pipe in a parking garage, they encountered what Corey Baum called a “no-man’s-land crawlspace area” that the pipe had to pass through. It was too low to stand up, but at the other end of the space, it opened up to an area about 20 feet tall, enough for fellow member and second-generation IBEW brother Byron King to bend the pipe freestyle. That space also had green-tinted windows at the top where natural light came through, creating an effect that led Baum to dub the image “Weird Bends in Strange Spaces.”