Themed photo competition – the first week of 2011

Just a thought. I have been browsing and have seen that the BBC website is doing a themed photo competition and as we have several photographers on this site I thought maybe a theme per week might inspire over here too?

Only one picture per contributor per week posted as a comment in this thread, using the instructions which Bearsy has added on the Main Page Menu Bar.

The theme: Sunlight and Clouds. Closing date Sunday 9th @ midnight.

Val, maybe you could be the first judge? Pretty please.

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Author: Sarah

No time to lose. No, time to lose. Make time to stand and stare.... Did you see that?

155 thoughts on “Themed photo competition – the first week of 2011”

  1. This sounds a wonderful idea Pseu, I like the idea very much, and I’m sure there will be many contributors. I feel honoured that you feel me worthy of being the first judge, I’m blushing now. So, sunlight and clouds it is then, get those cameras out folks, and good luck.

  2. Oh goody goody!

    We could improve the ‘theme’ maybe in future weeks? Ideas welcomed, but I’m thinking of themes, such as spirals, or sadness, mind the gap and contour lines….

  3. Great idea, Pseu (and Val).

    Pretty please, will all authors try to pre-process their images to be exactly 700px wide, upload them to the Media Library first and then add them to your post, ‘adding them’ from the media library and selecting ‘Full size’ (which will show ‘700 x height’). Don’t add an auto caption, or, if you are going to, pre-process the image to a width of 685px instead, ‘cos the WordPress routines are a little buggy (the caption box takes up space).

    If you can’t manage this, I’ll be happy to edit your posts for you. But please don’t upload smaller pictures (or the quality will suffer), or blooming great ginormous ones with file sizes of multiMegs – we’re beginning to run short of storage.

    Thanks! 😎

  4. Thank you Bearsy.
    I have a friend who’d like to join in… I have been reading her blogs for a while now… how do I go about introducing her and getting her on here as an author?

  6. Sure, Pseu, no problem.
    All she has to do is make a comment somewhere on The Chariot so that I can see her WordPress registered e-mail address which I need in order to enrol her as an author. Or she can e-mail me with her address if she’d prefer not to comment. aussiebearsy@gmail.com

  8. I’ll have a practice run at putting an image into the library etc Bearsy, then you can confirm all is ok. I’ll do it tomorrow hopefully, can’t do it now as I’m in bed typing from phone….just showing off really.
    See you tomorrow Pseu, night night.

  10. Just for a giggle, here’s a (real) picture of the current sky over Brisbane –

    Yes, that’s right – uniformly grey! 😎

  13. “Uniformly grey!” We have the opposite problem. Not a cloud to be seen and it is hotter than hell. Well, 36 degrees, but not a breath of wind. South Africa has to bowl out India today at Newlands. I do not envy them.

  16. Pseu, are we to take it that the winner, chooses the next theme, or are you going to set out a list of themes for a few weeks ahead?

  17. By rights, for this time of year, Sipu, it should be 32 to 34 and very humid under cloudless skies here; it’s that global warming, innit?

  21. Pseu,

    As much as I like the idea of the photo comp, can’t the picyures be posted on the compo post instead of each entry getting a post of its own?

    I only ask because the main page is now full of compo entries and naff all else.

  22. I suppose so, Ferret, but that will mean I have to learn to post a picture in comments….. 😦

  23. Far be it from me to disagree, O Furry Friend, but there are not SO many new posts these days. And they are listed on the right if anybody wants to see them.

  25. Ah Nym,

    Hadn’t thought of that. 🙂

    Hugh,

    A pessimistic view, but I take your point. I shall wind my small furry neck in. 🙂

  27. I can see what you mean Ferret, particularly if Pseus themed idea takes off, which it looks like doing.
    Pseu, If you do as Bearsy suggested, and post images in the media library, they are easy to link up an attach to a blog…..if I can do it, anyone can 🙂

    Okay, let’s hear it for where the competition images should be posted, before there are too many entries to transfer.
    Exciting innit Pseu 🙂

  31. Thanks Val,

    Would the pictures also be easier to judge if they were all in the same place? Rather than following links to here, there and everywhere.

  32. Yes they would Ferret. If Pseu agrees, I think perhaps we should do that. It will stop any going astray or missed too, so I think it may be a sensible idea, especially as it’s taken off so well, good girl that Pseu 🙂

  34. Ferret :

    Pseu,

    As much as I like the idea of the photo comp, can’t the picyures be posted on the compo post instead of each entry getting a post of its own?

    I only ask because the main page is now full of compo entries and naff all else.

    Absolutely I agree, Ferret. Not only will the Front Page be swamped with one type of post, but the list of posts at the side will have nothing but photo posts on it.

  35. I have edited my entry so that an intro line shows before the ‘more’ insert, and then the picture doesn’t fill the front page.

    If we move over to inserting the pictures into the thread, I shall need one set of clear instructions again (Bear with me Bearsy) and I shall print them off as I have the last set and pin them on the notice board…use them as carefully as possible. 🙂

  37. Please understand Nym,

    I am not poo pooing the idea, it is a brilliant compo and already appears to have attracted a new member to the site. Win Win.

    Good on yer for coming up with it. 🙂

  38. Bearsy is actually busy doing something else – but he will be back as soon as he has sorted that out.

    Hi Kate and welcome!

  42. It’s very exciting, isn’t it?!

    Please re-read the original post now to see the rules. Ta muchly

  43. Wrong Toc. Sorry, but wrong. Please read the post and then edit your comment. You’ve cut and pasted from the post editor and it don’t work for images. Sorry, I’m falling asleep, I must disappear to bed. 🙂

  48. Pseu, strictly between you and I, and don’t tell the others, this theme of yours has caused much wonderful excitement, in my pocket I mean. Ever since I’ve had this new phone, it buzz’s me when there is a blog or a comment. I’ve had to take the bloody thing out of my pocket, I’ve been vibrating ever since you posted it 🙂

  51. Not sure what you did here Bootsy, but if it’s any help, I have put a blog on called ‘Bearsy – test image’ if you want to go and have a practice run at. We have.
    Val.

  53. Plus Bootsy,

    Your original pic is waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too large you need to use photo editing software to reduce it in size. 🙂

  54. Lol…I know it is way too large, that’s why I was screaming.

    Thanks for sorting it out, is late here, that’s my excuse…

  61. There are some fantastic images here… thank you everyone who has contributed so far.

    I wonder how many of them have been taken during this week? (And in future I wonder if this should be a prerequisite of entering – picture taken between one Sunday and the next?
    I know we couldn’t police that, but it would mean contributors would have to get out and shoot and not trawl though already taken photos… what’s the consensus on this?

  63. Pseu: How many have been taken this week? Mine was 28 Dec 14:36:37
    You may want to do something along those lines – perhaps within a two week period, depending on the subject. It would mean of course you could not choose snow scenes as topic in July!
    Kate Day used to – maybe still does – run a photo competition at the other place, which attracted a lot of entries, but the judging of it seemed a trifle wayward at times.(i.e. I didn’t win every time, Ferret!)

  66. coldwater John, my son had a mention on Kate Day’s photo competition… he was placed, (Maybe third) but can’t remember the details, for a photo he sent in of an oak tree in snow, when it snowed late in Spring one year… I used to visit to see what had been entered sometimes.

    Good point about subject matter, especially as we are all over the world between us: topics will have to be non seasonal, and open to interpretation.

  68. Hosted by imgur.com

    Not taken this week – about 8 years ago, in fact 🙂 This is ‘Snow Mountain,’ in the far NW of Heilongjiang Province in China – almost in Tibet. It was summer and on the way back to the airport, we chanced a dip in a lake fed by a stream from the mountain. Big mistake 🙂

  73. Araminta – Give me a break, Araminta, for gawd’s sake. I’m tearing around like a blue-arsed fly trying to correct everyone’s code and to calm the ruffled feathers of the 2 or 3 who are sulking. And a load of other housekeeping duties, like finding time to explain how to handle Galleries for Val. I will publish a further explanatory post when I have the time.

    Let Bootsy chose which one is her actual entry.

  74. You are doing a wonderful job, Bearsy! I just thought I’d point it out.

    I love both her pictures but the second one is just beautiful.

  75. Bootsy – I have reduced the file size of your first entry for you. You will find it in the Library with a recognisable name! 🙂

  77. Good morning, is very early here, but I had the need to see if I’d messed up the whole site after my attempts last night.

    Araminta, I do understand only one entry per person, but had you seen how competently I screwed up the first one (thanks again to Ferret for fixing) you’d probably have realised I was just practising.

    I had, at that point, failed to notice Val’s ‘Test’ posting as too engrossed in resizing images in my editing software, which I’ve never had to do before.

    Thanks for fixing the second one Bearsy, I will read up again on your instructions…

    So to keep within the rules, I will choose my first picture…Thank you.

  79. I kind of gathered that you hadn’t Araminta, but as you can see by Ferret’s comment, it was drastically way too big, and I mean big. If you had a 60″ TV, you may have got the picture, if you see what I mean.

    Thanks for the compliment, they are both actually Hawaii in 2008, so as Pseu says, taking them within the appropriate week, rather than from all our previous files, will be interesting to see what we can all come up with.

  80. Love these pics. When I haven’t been in work, it’s been pitch black or foggy so I’m pinning my photographic hopes on ‘sunshine and clouds’ on Saturday… fat chance! 🙂

  81. Sunlight and clouds, well the former is no problem but if you want a picture taken this week the cloudy bit could be a bit tricky!

    Here’s the view from my front stoep this morning

    Still, I suppose that the subject could have been ‘snow’ or ‘rain.’

    So, I put my thinking cap on, took a look around the kitchen and came up with this.

    😉

  82. Don’t you just hate it when there are places in the world that don’t have clouds 🙂

    Lovely Soutie, the second one should win a prize, it’s great.

  83. Soutie, definitely 10/10 for creativity on that one…. Love the fluffy clouds, could just curl up and sleep on those!!!

  84. Soutie – that should be the view from my back garden at this time of year. This morning at 9.00 am it was so dark it might just as well have been night… but, one wouldn’t have been able to sleep for the sound of rain. 🙂

  85. Re-“Don’t you just hate it when there are places in the world that don’t have clouds” – to think we used to wake up every morning for several decades of opening the bedroom curtains to warmth and sunshine in a cloudless sky, and mutter, “how boring”, to ourselves!

  89. Lovely pic, Kate

    (I hope you all realise that the dark spot on my pic is just a fly on the lens ;))

  90. Hi Kate. Don’t panic about messing up!

    I’ve corrected your code: you didn’t have much wrong only the URL (the bit that says “http….”.

    Go to “My Blogs” and hover the mouse over it – you should see a list of options.

    On “Dashboard” – right click “open in a new window”.

    Look down the side bar and you should find “Library” – click on that.

    You should see your picture… click on the “edit” option underneath it.

    There are various bits and bobs there – what you are looking for is the “File URL”

    Copy that and instead of posting what you did (and I’m sorry I should have copied it before replacing it – but it was something about attachments) – paste what you copied.

    But I’m sorry to say that your photo is eeeenormous! It needs reducing drastically! But that will have to be tomorrow’s problem! 🙂

    P.S. If that’s not very clear don’t worry – I’ll get Bearsy to explain better tomorrow.

  93. There are some sensational photographs here, my task as first judge is not going to be an easy one, I can see. Don’t forget, you have have until midnight tomorrow folks to submit your entries, good luck to everyone.

  98. It might be just me Kate, my computer running slow perhaps perhaps, but these last two images of yours are taking an age to appear, in fact the one above is still loading as I type this comment.
    We’ll see what the others think, because it might be just me. They don’t look too big, and are within the grey box. Lovely images all the same, good on yer.

  102. Not entirely sure this will work, but if it does, it was taken early this morning – the crack of dawn over the Cotswold edge.

    Pic removed see comment below
    S

  103. LOL no it’s not. I appear to have nicked Bearsy’s. ok. 2nd time lucky. This is definitely the url from the pic, by me, in the library without the candlestick.

  108. The site is not slow – it is the size of the photos that make it slow.

    Posting pictures that are eeenooormous is like asking you to unfurl a banner 20 foot wide and then squeeze it into a space the size of a handkerchief. I reckon you’d all do it a great deal slower than if you were to simply unfurl a hankie! Your computers are no different – they take longer to unfurl the banner than they do to open up the hankie. And hankie size is all that is needed to get exactly the same visual result. Bigger isn’t better on screen!

    We don’t try to get people to put up smaller pictures for the fun of being ‘grumpy’! In fact, we hate appearing to be ‘grumpy’ – especially when all we are doing trying to do is to make sure that your experience of the site isn’t marred by it appearing to be slow! Ignoring the problems of storage space – posting appropriately sized picture ensures that everyone will download the images quickly.

  110. Hi, Boadicea.

    Absolutely, but it is quite a tricky thing to explain. I think your comment #108 is an excellent analogy.

    Good that Bearsy is going to explain how to avoid the problem.

  111. Cheers Araminta!

    It is a bit hard to be called grumpy when we’re not!

    I can understand that people don’t understand the problem, especially since the next time they open that picture it isn’t slow. That’s because their computers have tucked the image into ‘cache’ and don’t have to go through the whole ‘unfurling’ and ‘squeezing’ process again.

  115. Here’s my effort

    Oh, dear God – I hope I got this right after all Bearsy’s hard work with the tutorials.

    OZ

    Corrected Boadicea

  117. Hey OZ, don’t worry. He’s a most patient and forgiving bear. 🙂 I speak as one who has cocked up already today and am about to risk cocking up again…. 😀

  119. Hi OZ, good to see you. I haven’t a clue how to reduce it on here, but try again. reduce it to the size Bearsy said above and it should be fine.

  124. Hiya, Jan – The Bear will have to be exceptionally patient and forgiving in my case. 😦

    OZ

  126. Hi OZ! 😉 I’m sure he will be. Just go to the top of this post and click on “Images in Comments” – that’s what I’ve been looking at. Only just got home so haven’t read the full unexpurgated “Owterdoimages” tutorial but have read it a bit and it looks just what i need to inwardly digest.

  127. LOL Bilby!!! Sometimes, I’m such an innocent, it’s pitiful. As you will have gathered, Dawn was called away so I had to make do with the cloud.

  129. Oh, b*gger! Now I have to concentrate and I have brain ache already. Back soon.

    Sob!

    OZ

  130. Bearsy has put another post on about how to reduce etc, okay, you need to read it three times at least, but I generally do with any instructions, I’m a bit tick at times.
    The most important thing to remember is, make a copy of the original, then play with the copy, that way you don’t lose lose anything.
    The colours are fantastic OZ.

  137. OZ

    Put up a post. I’ll put another picture in a comment.

    Since it’s your post you will be able to ‘edit’ my comment and see the difference between what I’ve done and you are doing. You will kick yourself for making life so very complicated!

    🙂

  139. OK, Boadicea – I’ll put up a test post and then delete it when the answers are in so as not to hamper The Chariot with excess baggage.

    Sorry for being thick. You have the disadvantage of having a blond wolf on your books.

    OZ

  140. A big thank you to everyone for making such a big effort and posting so many FANTATIC pictures! It was spur of the momnet idea which seems to have caught the imagination. I apologise for making life difficult for Bearsy and Boa.

  141. It’s been brilliant Pseu, and long may it continue. I’m logging off now & going for a scrub down in the bath, I need to be up bright and early to announce the winner tomorrow. Night night everyone.

  143. Pseu asked for ‘Sunlight and clouds’, and she got it in abundance. Each of the photographs posted in the first of this competition, are quite simply, beautiful, which has made my task as the first judge, very difficult indeed. Size wise, we’ve all struggled a bit, but with time and patience, we will conquer.

    We can all take a bad photograph, that’s easy: taking a good photograph is the real test. But who says what a good photograph is. Yes it’s good to get the focus just right, it’s a good idea to get everything lined up to near perfection, but a really good photograph is the one that pleases, the one that pleases the photographer, as well as the person viewing it. A photograph is a moment in time, a moment never to be repeated.

    I would like to say thank you to Pseu for starting this photography competition, it has all the makings of a real winner, and talking of winners….

    I have studied each of the photographs over and over, and the one that has all the requirements for the competition, the one that stands out for me, is OZ #131
    He came in at end, but what a stunner.
    OZ, it’s simply beautiful, congratulations, you are a very worthy winner.

    Congratulations to everyone else too, you are all close runners up. I’m just pleased I didn’t have to enter this first one, the competition was too great.

    Okay OZ, it’s over to you, what are you going to choose as the next theme?

  147. As successes go this was mega (and I ain’t talking pixels here ;))

    Well done Val on the judging, could I suggest a separate post announcing the winner and next weeks theme?

    It is customary for the judge to set the next challenge so I assume that the ball is still in your court!

  148. Sorry Soutie!

    Customary to post a Winner’s Post – and for the winner to set the next competition!

  150. Soutie, thank you, the judging was Mega difficult, I kept going over and over each image.
    Boa is right to point out that the winner, should choose the next theme, I just hope OZ makes life easy for us all 🙂 :-)…………only joking Mr Wolf, go for it, put us to the test, if you dare.

  151. Oops! quite correct 😳

    Do you have room for me in the corner or are all the seats taken? 😉

  154. Would anyone object if I removed a few of the comments here, leaving primarily the photos? The ‘how to’ questions are answered in Bearsy’s helpful blogs, and therefore most on here are not needed for posterity 🙂

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