Photographic competition and calandar
Discussion
Just realised you run a regular comp in this corner of PH, so excuse this naive post:
This year we ran a rather low key photo competition in our village to make a village calendar. Only villagrers entered. We ran an informal voting system at one of our summer evenets to choose the winners, did the calendar in Publisher and a local printer is knocking us out 100 to sell. Not as easy as it sounds because:
We didn't specify the orientation so we had a mix of portrait and landscape
We didn't say they couldn't Photoshop and one guy did, big time
People lost the Jpegs between printing them and winning
Printing 100 calendars is expensive and not very profitable to re-sell
One guy who is a keen amature photographer won everything and we had to ask him to withdraw a few to let others win!
One or two people juust droped a slack handful of snaps in an envelope, 20 or 30 in one woman's case, all of which were utter rubbish, pictures of litter bins and dog muck etc.
Next year we are hoping to do it properly but wondered what the pitfalls were of opening up the competition to the local photographic club, RSPB, rambler and wildlife groups. Do you for example insist the picture is less than 12 months old? Does it have to be talen within our village area and will they lie about that? What about photoshopping? Do you specific orientation or the size and mounting of the prints ( we had everything from cheap Happy Snaps to fully mounted pics this year? Is it best to do 2 competeitions , one for landscape pics and one for wildlife?
Do you limit the number of entries a person can make? This year we asked them to submit them to represent a month and a cover design but ended up short in some months and knee deep with snow pics after last years snow.
Is it prize enough to be in the calandar or should we offer another prize? We are a small village so cash prizes and fancy equipment are not within the purse. We could offer a family ticket to the summer BBQ??!
This year we ran a rather low key photo competition in our village to make a village calendar. Only villagrers entered. We ran an informal voting system at one of our summer evenets to choose the winners, did the calendar in Publisher and a local printer is knocking us out 100 to sell. Not as easy as it sounds because:
We didn't specify the orientation so we had a mix of portrait and landscape
We didn't say they couldn't Photoshop and one guy did, big time
People lost the Jpegs between printing them and winning
Printing 100 calendars is expensive and not very profitable to re-sell
One guy who is a keen amature photographer won everything and we had to ask him to withdraw a few to let others win!
One or two people juust droped a slack handful of snaps in an envelope, 20 or 30 in one woman's case, all of which were utter rubbish, pictures of litter bins and dog muck etc.
Next year we are hoping to do it properly but wondered what the pitfalls were of opening up the competition to the local photographic club, RSPB, rambler and wildlife groups. Do you for example insist the picture is less than 12 months old? Does it have to be talen within our village area and will they lie about that? What about photoshopping? Do you specific orientation or the size and mounting of the prints ( we had everything from cheap Happy Snaps to fully mounted pics this year? Is it best to do 2 competeitions , one for landscape pics and one for wildlife?
Do you limit the number of entries a person can make? This year we asked them to submit them to represent a month and a cover design but ended up short in some months and knee deep with snow pics after last years snow.
Is it prize enough to be in the calandar or should we offer another prize? We are a small village so cash prizes and fancy equipment are not within the purse. We could offer a family ticket to the summer BBQ??!
Edited by Cogcog on Thursday 14th October 09:09
From your experience last year sounds like you have a good handle on the pitfalls.
As its your competition, then just set the rules to make it work for you. You can state you only want landscape format images, a maximum number of submissions per entrant etc. You can say anything goes as far as photoshop is concerned or limit it such as excluding composite images made up from two or more photographs. To get around the issue of people loosing JPEGs why not get them to submit their entries as the full sized JPEG?
The only thing you really need to be careful of is that the entrant does own the copyright of the image and state that by entering they are granting you a licence to reproduce and distribute that image in the calendar.
As its your competition, then just set the rules to make it work for you. You can state you only want landscape format images, a maximum number of submissions per entrant etc. You can say anything goes as far as photoshop is concerned or limit it such as excluding composite images made up from two or more photographs. To get around the issue of people loosing JPEGs why not get them to submit their entries as the full sized JPEG?
The only thing you really need to be careful of is that the entrant does own the copyright of the image and state that by entering they are granting you a licence to reproduce and distribute that image in the calendar.
I would keep it local
I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
IMHO
ETA - below, my cover from the village calendar before last. In case you wondered about photoshop... this is. The skill is in not making it look unreal. That's not using photoshop, it's screwing the photo up!
I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
IMHO
ETA - below, my cover from the village calendar before last. In case you wondered about photoshop... this is. The skill is in not making it look unreal. That's not using photoshop, it's screwing the photo up!
Edited by GetCarter on Thursday 14th October 09:41
GetCarter said:
I would keep it local
I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
IMHO
ETA - below, my cover from the village calendar before last. In case you wondered about photoshop... this is. The skill is in not making it look unreal. That's not using photoshop, it's screwing the photo up!
Yes the politics! We ended up with some absolute stinkers just to make sure anyone who submitted any number of pics won something. Even liter bin woman won one. The winning January shot had (and you may know the technical term) bleedin' big bright spots from the flash bouncing off falling snow which I had to remove. I think next time we go with the best.I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
IMHO
ETA - below, my cover from the village calendar before last. In case you wondered about photoshop... this is. The skill is in not making it look unreal. That's not using photoshop, it's screwing the photo up!
Edited by GetCarter on Thursday 14th October 09:41
We used the summer event to short list and then usd a sub-committee to make the final decision but guess an independent element would work well although it probably takes somebody from the village to help judge if only so that any photoshopping didn't actually change things so the village scene couldn't be recognised. The winning cover design this year was a composite of various village boundary signs which seemeed to slip through because everyone has seen the signs, just not in one place!
Print run wise I think we will look to get them printed in September ready for the village AGM and to beat the Christmas posting overseas and try 250, altrhough the idea of getting others involved was to sell a few to the ramblers, RSPB etc.
Cogcog said:
We ended up with some absolute stinkers just to make sure anyone who submitted any number of pics won something. Even liter bin woman won one. The winning January shot had (and you may know the technical term) bleedin' big bright spots from the flash bouncing off falling snow which I had to remove.
Print two calendars. One is the best photos, the other is the crappiest photos 
Edited by Simpo Two on Thursday 14th October 10:38
Even without the politics putting together a calendar is a tough ask - I've done my daughter's primary school calendar three years on the trot. You need to make it easy to run from your point of view and easy to enter for those interested.
GetCarter said:
I would keep it local
I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
Very good advice Steve. Make sure the judges are well briefed and you'll end up with the best result all round - worthy winners and a good looking calendar that's easy to sell.I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
AndWhyNot said:
Even without the politics putting together a calendar is a tough ask - I've done my daughter's primary school calendar three years on the trot. You need to make it easy to run from your point of view and easy to enter for those interested.
(Very) amateur photographer here, but would that file size restriction not exclude the majority of people from entering? My old compact Sony camera (only 6mp admittedly) had an average file size of about 2Mb.GetCarter said:
I would keep it local
I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
Very good advice Steve. Make sure the judges are well briefed and you'll end up with the best result all round - worthy winners and a good looking calendar that's easy to sell.I would not make it month specific - probably season specific
I would let people know they have to submit a landscape format JPG not smaller than 4 mb in size
I would let them know that photoshopping is completely fine
I would make more than 100
I would donate all profits to the 'village fund' (or whatever)
I would say that the prize is to have the cover photo
I would let the local camera club do the judging
You might not then have to run a mile from the village politics
Rest sounds good.
And I like the sound of a second calendar with 'bad' shots. It may be something done in many towns and cities, or may just be here, but there's a shop in Reading that seems to do good business from selling postcards, wrapping paper etc showing the most horrible parts of the town! If you've never been here, you'll have to take my word for the fact that there is plenty to choose from...
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