It's photo contest time!

We have a longstanding tradition of a fall photo contest here at DG, and here is the link to this year's contest:
http://davesgarden.com/contest/2010-photography-contest

This year will have the same category as last year's. Here's a link to last year's contest results: http://davesgarden.com/contest/2009/

Starting Monday, entries can be submitted anytime over a two-week period. We'll then have a week for voting before wrapping up the contest before the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday, and giving everyone plenty of time to order a calendar featuring all the winning photographs.

Same contest rules as in the past - your own photos, no obvious enhancements, two per member per category, and only photos that haven't been submitted to previous contests.

Category winners will receive a free calendar, and a free one-year subscription or annual renewal. Everyone who enters a photo will be entered in a random drawing for a subscription.

Hi Terry,

I found the link for the 2009 contest winners.

Maybe you could put a ribbon or something on the "My Info" page where our subscription info is if you place in the contest. I think that it would be cool to see when you go to a member's info that they placed in DG contests.

Since you are an Admin person, can you tell me how to get to "my friends"? I know how to add a friend but I can't get to my list unless I and another friend. Thank you.

I think DG has great contests. I just wish they had a bold banner on the home page during the contests and afterwards showing the winners. I found the County Fair Contest the day before it ended by accident and haven't found anything about the winners. I also found this contest by accident while looking for the correct place to ask about finding my friends. Maybe I'm doing something wrong or I'm just not too bright. LOL!

The photos forum seems like it would be a good place to post a notice, too. Aha, I see some one did. Never mind! :>)

This message was edited Oct 28, 2010 7:02 AM

Terry,

Thanks for all of the great answers! Off to enter some photos.

Are we able to view the entries yet?

Thank you Terry.

I want to enter photos in the contest and am having problems with the caption preview. The photo looks great but there is no caption to preview. Anyone else have this problem or is it just me???

Thanks.

Same here. I've entered pictures in some categories and when I click on preview I see the photo but not the caption.

It really will appear after you submit it. You can check it by viewing your entries. I had the same problem as did others.

Thanks Pirl, I didn't think to go back and review after I submitted them.

I'm always confused about the time that the "entering photos phase" ends. I'm assuming that folks can enter on Monday, 11/8, until midnight Pacific Time. Is this correct?

Thanks, Terry.

Terry,
In judging photos, I notice that some have a date and/or time stamp on them which detracts considerably from the photo. Can these be removed?
Thanks,
Maryann

I sense that there is going to be a low voter turnout for this contest. For one thing, you would never know that the contest even existed from the Home page. The Contest is a "best kept" secret.

For another, it takes a long time to vote. I have HughesNet, which is a satellite uplink/downlink system (we live in a rural setting) and, although it is considerably faster than dial-up, it is much slower than DSL, cable, etc. It took me hours to vote the Container category (I don't have any entries there). I won't have time to do any more voting. Too bad, because there is some fabulous photography here.

I think that next year the contest needs to be set up differently. Something intermediate between "full view" and "thumbnail view". And put a few "teaser" photos on the Home page that link to the Contest page.

ZM

This message was edited Nov 13, 2010 4:16 PM

Yes, it takes a really long time...........I am sure setting up something different would take quite a bit of doing, but with the popularity of entering this year, perhaps justified. A slide show to begin the viewing would certainly help.

I am also of the opinion that we should be able to vote for at least five as choosing just three was difficult and at times very agonizing as the photos are absolutely great.

Edited to add: If some of the categories were split up a little more (ie fall and winter, sunrises sunsets and moons) narrowing it down to three would be a LITTLE bit easier. Still like the idea of five with points from 5 down to 1.

This message was edited Nov 13, 2010 3:38 PM

Yep - if I forget to turn off the date/time when taking a pic I definitely crop it out. It is very distracting when viewing the photos.

We can't remove the date/time stamps - those are entirely controlled by the member who submits the photo.

We don't add a watermark during the upload (as we do by default for most other photos uploaded), so we've already done everything we can on our side.

I agree with you about the banner to alert everyone to the voting - I had thought we would have one up by the latter part of next week.

Terry: why have a banner up the latter part of next week alerting everyone to voting? I thought voting ended tomorrow?

Sorry I mistyped that - I meant we should have had a banner up by the latter part of LAST week :-)

LOL Terry, I've been fighting a horrible cold so I had to read it a few times to make sure I was seeing it correctly. ^_^

You were reading it as it was written. I have no cold or any other excuse for the wandering mind that typed that :-)

I thought I read on another thread taliarose from Admin was going to post the photo contest banner this past Friday. Here it is Sunday and tomorrow is the last day for voting. I have to say, again, I am disappointed they thought the survey banner was more important than a photo contest banner.

To be fair, I don't think it was a matter of the survey announcement being more important - the announcements are something that only a person with certain tech access can add or remove; Melody, Talia and I cannot manage them. And unfortunately weekends are not the best time to get a change like that made.

I would like to start buy saying that you admin. folks are awesome! Thank you!

It did take a long time to go through all of the pictures but I loved how you set it up so we could save our favorites and go back later. It was very hard to pick only three but somebody has to do it. LOL! I wouldlike to see a Frog/ Lizard/Snake category and a Vines and Climers category. I myself won't vote for a picture that is time stamped. Sorry! It bugs me! I also thought that it was funny that some people didn't seem to understand that this was a PHOTO contest, not really a place to post family photos or before and after photos. As I said in the beginning of this post I tink you need to do a banner early to give people time to get their photos together and get the brain thinking about the contest. Here is Terry's reply to that suggetion incase you don't want to read the whole thread:

"We put up a big bold alert a few days before the deadlines to remind everyone that it's time to get the entries in, or get your votes in. If we put it up for the whole contest period, people would start to ignore it, and it wouldn't be as effective as it is when it's only up for a few days.

To announce the contest, we put notifications here in the DG forum, on our Facebook page, and in the weekly newsletter as well. (We really - REALLY - do want to get the word out without annoying everyone who isn't interested in participating.)".

I don't think that a banner would annoy anyone. I think that they should have a banner everyday with something that is going on. I love Daves and don't want to miss anything that is going on here. I undersatnd (slightly) that redoing anything on a site is a pain in the butt but maybe if you had a banner everyday and just changed the text according to what was going on (County Fair, Photo Contest, Photo Contest Winners, etc.) maybe it wouldn't be so hard. I wish I new more about web design so I could help.

Any idea when you will announce the winners?

Thanks again!

Kiyzersoze: The winners have been announced. ^_^ Go back to the contest page and click on each category to view the winners.

Congrats to all winners, and thanks to all who entered their beautiful photo's! The 2011 Calender is sure to be stunning!

Oh WOW! Thanks plantladylin. I'm so excited! Going now!

Congrats to all of the photo contest winners!! I had great fun entering and judging!! Can hardly wait until the next one;~)

Did anyone else notice that the same picture won in Perennials and Weird and Funny?

Tree frogs, WC's carousel and the duck won on Weird/funny/misc.

For perennials the clematis, yarrow and daylily won. There was another photo with a frog in the center but not the same as the tree frogs photo.

I found it hard to find the photos. I had to use the search option. Is there an easier way?

If you click on the link Terry posted in the very first post in this thread that takes you straight to the contest page. Otherwise, from your home page go to "Extras" then scroll down to find the link to photo contests.

You can find all the winning entries here:
http://davesgarden.com/contest/2010-photography-contest/index.php

Just click on each category and you'll see them.

Congratulations to all of the winners! Thank you to everyone who entered. I really enjoyed viewing all of the photos and feel every entry is special. Do the winners need to send in the original photo (original, not resized) so it will be of higher quality when it is added to the calendar?

There were only 3 or 4 images that we needed the higher res versions of. The others were sufficient size that we were able to use them as-is. I've contacted the members who need to send those and am only waiting on 1 now.

We really hope to get the link to the calendar live in the next day or two. The entries are stunning!