It's time to vote for the winners of the 2007 photo contest!

Say Dave, I have a question concerning the photo contest. What are the legalities of using some of the fantastic photos we see in the voting "booth" and using them for background desktop pics on our own computers? Some are just sooo beautiful!By the way, the voting method this year is fantastic! A couple of hours spent was not too hard in finding three photos for each catagory. The hard part will be in your hands Dave, come Nov. 15th. Good luck to you!

All I can say is -------- WOW We have some pretty amazing pics there. I agree with everyone else, picking a top favorite was next to impossible. The only problem I had was that hubby was starting to get annoyed when I kept making him come over to check them out with me. LOL

I've had a couple more thoughts and one insight on judging, so I thought I'd share.

Firstly here's the insight. I was using the thumbnails method last night, and I realized that if I have decided that it looks good enough that I want to see it after I have looked at the thumbnail, I can click the Save link BEFORE the picture downloads and then close the Save this picture window immediately I can cut down on the band width and time quite a bit. I do have broadband, but I am on the cheap plan so my monthly download limit is only 500meg and my speed is limited to 1.5mbps. If I go over my limit they cut me back to dial up speed, unless I pay a top up fee of $5.95 for an additional 1000meg.

Also for similar reasons I wish the large photos in the saved list did not start over every time you delete them - it would be better if you could go right down the list (especially in the earlier stages of elimination) "Marking" the ones you want to remove, and then click on a link at the bottom "Delete marked Photos" which would THEN jumble the photos and re-start the list. it would speed things up enormously, without affecting the judging process at all. The easier you can make this process, the more people will want to vote. and the more representative the winners will be of our Member's tastes.

Someone earlier on made the comment that there must be professional photographers among the entrants, There might well be, but I'd punt for dedicated amateur photographers first. Here's a badly kept secret about "professional" photographers, both amateur and paid varieties They throw away more photos than they keep. You get good at a thing by doing it, and the best thing about digital photography, is that it has made it affordable for us to do what paid photographers have always done, and that is to take many photos of one subject, until we get "the one" which really does it justice. Sure there are lots of technical things you can learn, camera mechanics, formal composition etc etc. but it's hard to teach the "eye", that elusive quality which tells you when you look through the viewfinder, that you've got THE shot. That only comes with experience and the more photos you take, the more experience you get.

My other point is with the categories, I felt that trees and shrubs was hard to judge, in particular, because the change of scale between the two types of plant short-changed the shrubs rather badly. What about having some categories based on the scale of the object being photographed eg: Macro Details, Just the One (Leaf or Flower), A Few of These (Leaves, Twigs, Flowers) , Small Plants, Large Plants, That would get rid of the Annual/Perennial question for a start, and hopefully produce photos which would fit their categories better than some have this year as I'm pretty sure all of us can look at our photos and sort them that way, without having to agonize over it quite so much, LOL.

The other thing I would have liked Dave to have done was to let us know if there is a minimum size of photo which would be acceptable in the winners. For example the maximum size of photo in my camera is 4 megapixels and that is pretty small by modern digital standards - would that reproduce well enough for the calendars? Not that I EXPECT to win, but one can always hope!

Again, just my thoughts, for what they are worth.

Bye for Now, Kaelkitty.

Wow! Thanks! It was such a pleasure to go through and enjoy everybody's photos and captions. (I can always count on Dave's to put a smile on my face!). The insect category was so full of amazing "portraits". I have to throw in my vote for five choices for next year, because I too had had to leave some very excellent photos out simply because I could only pick three. I'd also like to suggest that the category of shrubs and trees be broken out into separate categories (hey, why not wildlife and pets too!) And, you know I think I'll throw my hat into the ring for next year!! Hey, why not! ;)

insect photo people...i really didn't think i would find any photos here that i would like other than for educational purposes. but i have to tell you that one of my favorite photos of any of the categories was found here. i just looooved it. it might even be my favorite.

Me, too! I'll Dmail you.

while i was looking at different categories i also wondered if there didn't need to be a "people" category.

I like the idea of a "People" category...as 2 of my favorites so far includes people/children . Jo

It might be a very good addition, but we need to take care that the number of categories doesn't get overwhelming as it was a couple of years ago.
Ann

Edited to say that I would REALLY like to see 5 final choices next year. I'm down to 4 in wildlife and I'm gonna have to choose randomly, I think.

This message was edited Nov 5, 2007 2:38 PM

Wildlife was one of the ones I thought was easy. LOL One picture just REALLY stood out to me.

It is so interesting and wonderful to see that people are so varied in their perception of beauty! What a boring world it would be if we all had the same taste.

Melissa

Well, I'm done - for better or for worse. I don't think I'll go back and look at them again until after the voting ends. Might change my mind.

Can we do that? Change our minds? Not that I want to, I was just curious.

Yes, I went back and made a change in one category. Next I'll review Pets again. It just breaks my heart to leave out some of those gorgeous photos.

go back up and read what dave said but i understood we could until the final day which is the 15th, i think.

It took me a full two days to finish the judging...
but just IMHO...

They really are ALL winners in my book!

We have some excellent photographers here at DG!

Great job everyone!

I just went back into one particular category, and made some gut wrenching changes of my votes.

It was really painful to do so, but decided in all fairness, I had to do it, if I was to respect the fact that this is a PHOTO contest.

It is so difficult to separate "oooh, that is such a neat look" or "oooh, that is so pretty!" , or "oooh, isn't that just the most adorable pic", to "That is such an excellent shot, the lighting looks perfect, the clarity is unbelievable, the shot fits the catagory perfectly".

In the end, I changed all three of my first choices to reflect my new choices strictly from a "quality of the photo" angle.

Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. SO many great photos.

Sasha

LOL, Sasha, I just finished the insect category, and I saved about three quarters of them! All of them were just fascinating, and there are soooo many beautiful butterflies!

Sasha you expressed the condundrum well. I have gone back and forth on that issue. overall quality vs. personal preference. I was inconsistent at best. Sometimes I let my (flower, pet, tree, etc.) bias dictate. Sometimes the stunning-ness of the photo won out.

But bias did win out on the negative side though... e.g. I wouldn't even look at any snake pictures no matter what! LOL

But some of those snake pics were great. LOL I won't say whether any made it to the final cut though.

judging was hard for me because sometimes i gave credit for an outstanding idea even though occassionally i could see that the technical part was not perfect. to me, the photographers whose pictures i chose were absolute poets.

just curious, i know we will learn who took the winning photos. but just in case, will we also find out who took all of the other photos?

In past years only the names of the people who took the winning photos (or 2nd and 3rd place, etc) were announced

Actually, if you check the past contests, it does show who submitted all the entries.

mamajack, you can see all the previous ones in the Extras section in the navigational bar.

other voting thoughts..

- how about Best of Show? After the 14 top winners are announced, can we choose the best of those? Maybe for the calendar cover.

-Even though the top 3 are winners, can we see the top 10 (or 20? or ?) for honorable mention?

oh, yes, i love honorable mention. there are just too many pictures for just a few winners. i also can't wait till we get to talk about who we each voted for and why. i have never voted in this contest before but i think i will never miss another one.

I think Honourable mention is a GREAT idea!

Whoo, this is gonna take a while on dial-up. Good thing
we have a couple weeks and our limit is back up for the month
from our ISP.

Great pix, I'm having fun with the containers right now.

KM

There are some really great pictures this year.

I wish I would have known the contest was underway as I have photos that I wanted to submit... I didn't see a post about it any where.

Donna

Oh, Donna, that is a bummer! Are you subscribed to the newsletter?

KM

Donna - make sure you have notifications enabled in your home page. Go to
"My Tools"
"Preferences"
"Customize Home Page"
enable "News from Dave" -

if you haven't done this, you can also select what other things you want to have showing on your home page and in which position you want them. It might take you a few tries to have things show where YOU want them - you can select column 1 or 2 and in which order. I have "News from Dave" enabled in the top of the second column. Most of the time there isn't anything there, but right now, it says:
------------------------------------------
It's time to judge the
2007 photo contest!
Nov 1st, 2007

It's time for all of us to vote
and select winners of the
photo contest! Click here
to read more.
---------------------------------------
That's also where the notice was about the contest itself. I'm sorry you didn't know about it, but look through your pictures now. You can set aside your best ones and enter them next year if they are still your best ones. They don't have to be from this year - just can't have been entered before.

Ann

edited to address it to Donna, not Wuvie

This message was edited Nov 6, 2007 9:52 PM

Edited to correct post.

Thanks, Ann. :-)

KM

This message was edited Nov 6, 2007 7:59 PM

Oops! Post appropriately edited.

I think it shows up more when it's on the home page. Too easy to miss things in the newsletter if one is busy and doesn't read it carefully. I also get the newsletter, but don't remember seeing it there - maybe because I already knew about it, though.

Ann

I do get the newsletter and I do read it.... just never saw anything about the photo contest. I have been pretty busy so it's possible that my eyes did see it but it didn't register in the brain.

Thanks,
Donna

This is my first year to "judge" and I have a suggestion. To me, the "pets" seem out of place --as mentioned by someone earlier, BUT, before you boo me, why not restrict the pet pics to those AMONG FLOWERS or gardens, etc? Otherwise, where are the baby pics?

This is fun, Dave! Thanks!!!!

I think the reason the pets are there is that there's a very active pet forum here. It sees a lot more action than some of the gardening forums :-)

I rather like the pets photos and I am a regular in the pets forum. I realize that pets in general... well... like what do they have to do with gardening? But, it works for a lot of us here.

It's my favorite part of the photo contest. I like to see all the pets... I'm an animal lover. And there's a lot of us here.

Take care,
Donna

In my garden, I cannot imagine not having pets. As I work, there
is always a cat nearby, sitting next to me, or helping me. They are
as much a part of my garden as my hand tools.

:-) Certainly many have babies, but I would dare to say a majority
of us have at least one pet, whereas babies maybe not so much. I
know there isn't one in my house. LOL.

No babies here either (unless you count the fact that I think of my dog as my baby)!

The other thing to remember is that while there wasn't any input on categories for this year, Dave used the same categories as last year which were chosen based on everyone's input, so there must have been more demand for pets than for babies from the people who participated in that discussion.

Putting photos of children and babies on a thread is something we've all read warnings about and I couldn't possibly put up photos of my 16 year old granddaughter or my little grandson.

I don't have babies OR pets. I prefer just stuff related to gardens.

danged hillbilly cats everywhere. seems they were not around when the neighbors boys hung out the deer though, maybe a natural deterrent?