Photo Contests - Snapshot Chronicles

Meet MY Indiana Jones; Capital One/Newsweek Photo Contest

11.01.2008 by Susan Getgood //

Halloween 2008

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Twitter friends may recall my tweets yesterday morning about a PR pitch I received that was actually relevant. It wasn’t perfect by any means; it was still clearly a mass e-mail, a bit too long and promo-speaky, and had a press release attached. BUT… it was for a photo contest from Capital One and Newsweek. I do occasionally write about photo contests on Snapshot Chronicles.

I have no idea whether the agency who sent the pitch just got lucky or did a decent job of blog targeting. After all, the volume game in PR counts on the fact that if you send enough pitches, you are bound to hit on a few. I also have seen a fair share of not-so-great pitches from the same agency over the past few years. However, I will give them the benefit of the doubt.

And tell you all about the photo contest. The theme for the contest is American Life, and the angle is that Capital One lets consumers personalize the image for their credit card. Online consumer votes from January 6 to February 6, 2009 will determine 50 semi-finalists and Newsweek Photo Editor Simon Barnett will pick the winners. The prizes are reasonable, but not excessive, and you can enter up to five photos per day. More details on the contest page.

Chances of winning? Pretty slim unless you really work at it, tag your photos properly and get out the vote. But is it pretty simple to enter; I did it quickly through the contest page and you can also enter through a Flickr group, which should make it dead easy.

Here are the photos I entered:

All the pictures were taken during our vacation in San Diego last April. The beach pictures were taken on Coronado Island and the water slide was at the resort. The giraffe is Ivan the 19 year old male at the San Diego Wild Animal Park. We went on one of the photo safaris where you actually go into the enclosures and feed the giraffes. It was tremendously special at the time, but even more so when we learned that Ivan died of old age about a week after our visit. More pictures from that day on Flickr.

Technorati Tags: halloween, Indiana Jones, photo contest, san diego, beach

September 1st

09.01.2008 by Susan Getgood //

Douglas at Shelburne Museum. More Shelburne pics.

Where has the summer gone? Tomorrow we pack up to go home after a month up here in Vermont. My husband has been going back and forth but Douglas and I have been here since August 2d with the dogs. I’ve been working all week while Douglas was in camp except for this last week when my mom came up, and I took a little time off.

We hit our usual haunts — VINS in Quechee and Shelburne Museum out near Burlington, and also checked out the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.

I used my telephoto lens at VINS and was amazed at some of the pictures of the raptors — if the bird was toward the back of the cage, the bars of the cage literally dissolve in the picture.

More pictures from VINS.

On Friday afternoon, we drove over to the Hathaway Farm in Rutland to do the corn maze.

Douglas and Dave, about 3/4 through the maze. More here.

Saturday looked a bit threatening weather-wise, a promise that was mostly delivered in the evening as we were driving through Rutland and the skies opened up. But we decided to take a chance and drive over to Fort Ticonderoga NY to see the King’s Garden, which was not open when we went on Memorial Day weekend.

Then we drove down the western side of Lake George to the town of Lake George and took a one-hour cruise on the paddlewheeler Minnie-Ha-Ha. Lake George looks like the typical honky-tonk beach town — think Hyannis, York Maine or Center Harbor on Winnepesaukee, including more mini-golf than you would ever want to play, but the cruise on the lake is very pleasant with quite a lot to see.

The boathouse is a smaller copy of the house.

Quite a bit of Victorian architecture along the lakeshore.

And of course the Adirondacks.

More garden photos,Ticonderoga’s park and waterfall, and Lake George.

Today, we may go over to Billings Farm; they do special activities on Labor Day that Douglas enjoys. Or I may just read my book. I find that I read more when I’m here than I do at home for some reason. Maybe I’m more relaxed. Right now I am reading the new James Bond novel Devil May Care by Sebastian Faulks, and I just finished two novels in Alexander McCall Smith’s Isabel Dalhousie series, The Right Attitude to Rain and The Careful Use of Compliments. You may know his Africa-based series The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency but I find I enjoy the Dalhousie tales set in Edinburgh even more. The new one The Comforts of a Muddy Saturday is due out later this month.

I’m also looking forward to Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3) by Christopher Paolini. While the second book in his trilogy was a bit disappointing, and the movie based on the first book Eragon was AWFUL, I’m hopeful that the conclusion of the tale will be better.

Bye, bye summer.

Technorati Tags: Vermont, Lake George, King’s Garden, Fort Ticonderoga, VINS, Shelburne Museum

The ridge in Barnard, Late Fall

11.15.2007 by Susan Getgood //

We went up to the house in Barnard Vermont for Veteran’s Day weekend. We didn’t do much, but it was nice to get a change of scenery. And I was able to get some shots of the ridge behind the house in late Fall for my series. See the earlier shots on Flickr.

New interviews have been posted in the Photographic Memories series, and don’t forget to checkout my sidebar for the latest HP Photo Books giveaways and contests from the mom bloggers. New this week:

Due to a shipping error, Maya at The Laurent Files got an extra Photosmart A626 compact photo printer which she is giving away in her contest.
Mir over at WantNot.net is also giving away some HP Photo Books this week. Entries for her random drawing end tomorrow.

Finally, if you are struggling over what to get your favorite child or Mum this holiday season, checkout the Cool Mom Picks Holiday Gift Guide.

Tags: HP Photo Books, Photographic Memories, photography, mommy bloggers