~~~The September Photo Contest Prelims are up.~~~

[CC]

The prelims are up in the lounge. Please help keep them kicked.

A big thank you to all the brave souls that entered this month's contest. All the photos are beautiful and are going to make it hard on the lounge when they can just only pick one. We also have some first timers in the contest. A very warm welcome to the photo group and the contest, I hope you come back to play every month. Please come post lots of pictures and join in the fun. We can be a greedy group but we love seeing pictures.

Poll 1
Poll 2
Poll 3


Edited to add- The pictures were picked and placed at random with the help of the smallest zoo crew members. Anything missing is most likely with the ferret stash.

[Ms. Toad]

1. Suggestion for next time....

First - thanks for all your work on this. Great job! So far I've succeeded in not winning so I can keep playing, rather than do all this work!

Now the suggestion for future hosts to tuck away:

I was too pressed for time when the poll was going on to read beyond the caption of the winning theme thread, so the announcement that I had been warned that a forest of trees might not fit the theme caught me by surprise in the lounge. The judging aspects of our little monthly game have ruffled a few feathers in the past (lounge v. photography forum, quality of photography v. content of the image winning over quality, order of submission v. random order, for example), so its probably best to make sure than any judging guidance regarding the theme comes from the contest entry thread.

I just do this for fun so I'm not bent out of shape, even though I pretty much entered a forest. If I were really invested in my forest picture and/or in performing well in the contest, however, I mighta been a bit cranky about the surprise. (As it is, seeing the warning in advance probably wouldn't even have even have changed my entry since I didn't really have time to carry out my other option which involved digging out a decades old college photo of a really cool tree, scanning it, and touching it up, all of which would have taken more time than I have at the moment...as evidenced by the fact that I didn't read the relevant theme announcement thread!)

[NashVegas]

2. It Was Pretty Clear to Me

In this thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=280&topic_id=19754&mesg_id=19754

that anything that veered into landscape territory was a no-no. I had a lot going on offline, and didn't venture out on a shoot; pretty much all the tree shots I already have venture into landscape territory, so I didn't bother entering.

And yet, perhaps 1/8 to 1/4 of the submissions strike me as just that.

I'm not personally bothered by it, though, and really don't think anyone should take these contests seriously.

[CC]

4. Now that is what the help pick my

pic threads are for.;) Plus it gets more out there for us to see. See above as to what I was trying to avoid.
The contest are for fun and hope no one takes them too seriously. Though I was hoping to get comments from some as to why they like this one or that one. One of the great things about the contest is the help me pick one threads and that there are people that post in it while not posting many of their other pics. It has also helped others find the group.

[Ms. Toad]

6. Unfortunately,

that's not the thread where I entered the contest.

I was genuinely surprised when I read the "we were all warned" line in the preliminary polls. I went back to the submission thread to see if I had read too quickly and missed something. When all I found there was "tree or trees" I went hunting for it. I did eventually discover it, but I hadn't seen it previously.

I agree with you that people shouldn't take these contests too seriously, but we all know that too many folks do. The most heated discussions I've seen here have come out of contest surprises (e.g. unexpected rotation of submissions in the polls, photos showing up in an off site contest gallery), or perceived unfairnesses (e.g. we need to move the contest to the forum, because lounge folks aren't judging on photographic quality).

I was just offering my $.02 to future hosts, by pointing out that surprising contestants with judging guidelines that don't match the submission guidelines might result in cranky contestants randomly tossing pixels around the forum, or engaging in some other equally unruly form of protest against the supreme poobah of the contest...

[CC]

7. After I typed last night I

went back and I noticed I forgot to put it in there. My bad and honest mistake. Right now I am just happy I have all the pics in and none twice. I'm glad you pointed it out, I basically tried borrowing from past contest for how to do this one so it should help future host too.

[Ms. Toad]

8. You did a great job,

Thanks again for pulling the contest together this month.

[CC]

11. Thanks, even with forgetting to add in about

landscape it has gone better than last time. Blue had a magical glacier pic that wanted to hide first then wanted to be in twice before it stayed put. That was after at least a month of polls being down in DU because of traffic. So far thankfully none of that.

[CC]

3. It wasn't a hard rule, more a of

suggestion to get people to think simple. Personally I was worried it would of ended up a pretty fall trees (lots of them) contest so wanted to try to avoid that. We had that contest last year and lots of people don't have fall trees where they are.
It works in that we don't have a contest full of hills and hills of distant trees showing off their colors. All but one has trees up close as an important part of the whole picture.


Hope I made sense, I need more coffee and less paint fumes.

[F.Gordon]

5. It appears that a couple of "landscapes" are doing well

I hope no one gets offended by that. This theme was confusing and simple at the same time. There was some effort made by CC to keep people "on track" ... like in my tree thread, but I'm sure few people have the time to read every thread/post. It was also IMHO a by-product of the "help me pick" threads of which I was guilty of pushing myself.

I also noticed that about 1/3 of the entries were over the recommended 200k file size.

If I ever "win" one of these things (think... "Hell Freezing Over") and get to play host it would be hard for me to "police" the contest because I'd just want everyone to play along. You might offend someone if you "police" their entry... but you might offend someone if you don't "police" entries.

Like I said.. it was a confusing and simple theme.
:crazy:

[regnaD kciN]

12. What do you mean, "if"...???

If I ever "win" one of these things (think... "Hell Freezing Over")

In case you didn't notice, Flash, you did win "one of these things." Remember the "Extreme Processing" challenge, that got upgraded to full monthly contest status when the winner of the previous contest got tied up with other responsibilities, and couldn't run a contest until the month afterwards? Due to that, the challenge became the contest, and your entry won going away. Since the next month's contest was hosted by the prior month's winner, you didn't have to run a contest, but you're still a "contest winner."

[superconnected]

14. I didn't realize landscapes weren't okay until I read your post.

Point overly made. Btw the tree thread was ambigous. It made the suggestion - as a personal opinion, and was making fun of things for the rest of the thread.

[TahitiNut]

9. I actually focus on Theme to this degree (or more) all the time.

It was refreshing to me to see others make comments that were theme-specific in the 'Pick One' polls, since it seems to me that's what makes it an interesting process.

I was DISAPPOINTED, however, not to see someone submit something like ...




:rofl:

[Ms. Toad]

10. Mine's sorta like that....

The fence in my forest is the reincarnation of a (or many) tree(s) :)

[NashVegas]

13. HeeHee

I almost submitted part of an artificial Christmas tree. Or brocolli, just to be a brat.

[bvar22]

15. I like it.

Family Tree , Money Tree, Tree of the Knowlege of Good & Evil
would have been fun concepts.

[TahitiNut]

16. There's also this one. (Can anyone name it without looking?)

[Blue_In_AK]

18. Is that a "tree" that they use for drilling oil in the Gulf?

[TahitiNut]

19. I doubt it.

It's called a "crosstree" (or "the crosstrees") ... and is part of the rigging on a stepped mast (2 sections) on virtually every square-rigger and some fore-and-aft rigged sailing ships. (Long ago and far away I spent a fairly significant amount of time climbing around such things.)

[JeffR]

17. Egad!!

Just when I'd reached a point where I was resigned to bizarre Lounge vote totals, along comes a contest where the results so far are almost exactly in line with my personal choices for the Final.

Have I gone crazy, or has the Lounge gone sane? :crazy: