Photo Contests & Competitions

The Digital Photography Club of Annapolis scheduled a Panel Discussion on Photo Contests and Competitions on January 28, 2008. Chuck Gallegos, Karen Messick, and Steve Bruza agreed to be the panelists for the discussion. Some helpful resources that they have recommended, as well as other online resources for photo contests and competitions are listed below.

Karen Messick recommended the guidelines in the You May Already Be a Winner article from Adorama as well as the Contest Guidelines from Better Photo.com.

The Photographic Society of America web site is recommended by Steve Bruza for their contests.

Although it is not a contest site, Chuck Gallegos recommended Onexposure.net as a good place to send photos to be critiqued.



Some local photo contest web sites, as well as some national photo competition web sites are listed below:

Outdoor Photographer Winter Contest

Friends of Prime Hook Nature Photography Contest

Maryland Wine Photo Contest

Maryland Renaissance Festival Photo Contest

Schooner Woodwind Cruises Photo Contest

Washington Gardener Photo Contest

Civil War Preservation Trust Photo Contest

Maryland Zoo Monthly Digital Photo Contest

National Wildlife Federation Annual Photography Awards

Maryland Department of Natural Resources Photo Contest

Smithsonian Magazine 5th Annual Photo Contest

Nature's Best Photography Awards

Slideshows on the Web

If you would like to share your slideshows with others, you can sit down at a computer together, send the slideshow or movie through email, or burn the files onto a cd. You can also post your slideshows online to make viewing the slideshow easy for anyone who has a computer and can go online. I have tried a few sites, and these are just a few examples.

If you create a slideshow with Picasa, you can post your slideshow online with Picasa Web Albums. You will need to sign up for a free google account, or use your existing account. Here is an example of a slideshow using Picasa Web Albums.




You can sign up for a free flickr account, post pictures online, and organize them into sets. Each set can be viewed as a slideshow. You can send the link to the slideshow to friends and family. Here is an example of a flickr slideshow:





If you use PowerPoint, you can upload your slides to Google Documents and post your slideshow online. You'll need to sign up for a free google account, or use your existing google account. I created a very short Robins Slideshow
that shows a mother robin feeding one of its young so that you can see how Google Documents works.

If you use iMovie to create a slideshow/movie, you can post it to YouTube. You will need to sign up for an account and follow the directions they provide in the help section. There is a video that helps explain how to upload videos on this page.

Time Lapse Photography

There are two amazing and inspiring time lapse videos by Rufus Blackwell at TimeLapseVFX! In these videos, the camera pans smoothly through some beautiful sequences. The music is well-suited to the video and adds to the inspiration.

Here are two more ideas for using a digital camera to create a time lapse series of photos. Both of these time lapse series can be set up at home and done inside during a cold or snowy day.



Note that in the time lapse video below, the artist moves back and forth between tight and medium shots several times. Sometimes we see his lighting set up and the still life he has set up and is painting from, and other times we move in close to focus on his canvas and his hands at work.

Digital Storytelling with Photographs

A good photograph tells a story. A collection or series of good photographs can tell a story, too. I became interested in digital storytelling after I attended my first workshop almost 5 years ago. Here are some digital storytelling links that might help you get started:

Examples of Digital Stories

Jeff Curto's Digital Storytelling web page is a good starting place. I thought Fish and Pictures would be particularly interesting to photographers.

Take some time to tour through Daniel Meadows Photobus website. He has wonderful stories and photographs.

Flickr's group Tell a Story in 5 Frames (Visual Storytelling) provides guidelines towards the bottom of their group page that you might find helpful.

Digital Storytelling Resources

Great podcast with guidelines, a little over 60 minutes long The Digital Photography Show #47: How to Tell a Story in Pictures with Bobbi Lane

The Digital Storytelling Cookbook provides the ingredients and a recipe for creating a digital story. Some links are broken, but it's still a good resource.

The Center for Digital Storytelling emphasizes personal voice. Examples and resources.

Digital Storytelling: A Tutorial in 10 Easy Steps leads you through the process step by step.

Don't be fooled. The Adobe Digital Kids Club web page is not just for kids...

Cog Dog Roo lists 50 Web Ways to Tell a Story. Good ideas for getting started.

A great example of a storyboard from the Digital Storytelling Cookbook.

A blank storyboard template with 10 frames from the Digital Storytelling Cookbook.

A simple three-square storyboard.

Time-lapsed movies and slideshows

YouTube movie of time-lapse Executive Portraits photo shoot

YouTube movie of night sky Hiawassee Sky All Night

Click "view as slideshow" to see my own Time-lapsed Amaryllis opening

Software for Slideshows

Microsoft's PhotoStory

Picasa

Faststone Photo Viewer

Windows MovieMaker

Apple's iMovie

Brandywine River Valley

Had a great trip through the Brandywine River Valley in Pennsylvania and Delaware this weekend. I try to keep my camera ready while riding in the car. I got this shot through the passenger window (I was not driving). During our tour through one of the museums, one person kept describing the local landscape as bucolic. Seems to fit...

Quiet Waters Arts Festival 2007

I was in my first art show two weeks ago. Met lots of interesting people, made connections with several other photographers, and learned a little about being in an art show! The other exhibitors at the show were a very friendly and helpful group. There are more pictures from the show taken by Dorothy Farley, a friend who is also a member of the Digital Photography Club of Annapolis at Friends of Quiet Waters Arts Festival 2007.

Art of the American Snapshot Exhibit

I really enjoyed The Art of the American Snapshot 1888-1978 exhibit at the National Gallery of Art on its opening day two weeks ago. The exhibit is contained in several rooms and the photographs are arranged in chronological order. Many of the prints were humorous or contained an element of surprise. One of my favorites was a small circular silver gelatin print taken sometime after 1888 of a large fishbowl placed outdoors on a wicker stand. The light on the glass and the water is what first catches your eye, but looking a little closer, you notice that there were five or six slightly ominous baby alligators swimming in the fishbowl. The collection of approximately 200 snapshots is definitely worth seeing and is on display until December 31, 2007.

I have been interested in old photographs for as long as I can remember, but that exhibit has renewed my interest in old family snapshots and has changed the way I see them. Here's one of my sister and me on a family vacation in Minnesota a few years ago. My father probably snapped this one...


Photo Copyright © 2007 Roberta Mislevy Photography. All Rights Reserved.