TOP's Holding an Event!

Strange though this might seem given what I said the other day about my attitude towards contests, it's now pretty certain that The Online Photographer will be staging one...except I've decided to call it an "event" rather than a contest*.

I've got some great judges lined up. There will be an entry fee—to help keep the numbers of entries down and the entries serious—but it will be modest. At no time will TOP or any entity associated with our event make any claim to any rights relating to your work—you'll retain 100% ownership at all times, including the right to withdraw your photo at any time.

The Event (it will have a name, but I won't reveal that just yet) will have several interesting stages; one might even call them "twists." The top prizes will not be specified exactly, but they might well be quite lucrative. Entrants will be limited for this event, although you'll be on your honor as to whether you qualify or not. (I'll explain what all this means in due course.)

I must say it's been very interesting designing this Event; once I settled a few key problems, everything seemed to fall into place.

I need to run the mechanics of the Event and the text of the announcement past the judges for their input, but once I hear from them I'll post the details. After that, we'll start with profiles of the judges. Stay tuned!

I hope this will be fun....

Mike

*To explain why, I've decided to plead the Parent Clause—"because I said so!" In other words, there's no real reason for it. I just want to.

Featured Comment by Andy Burday: "Kittens? Bumblebees? Puppies? Pshaw. I have a picture of a sunset that I took with my 14–24mm set to 14mm on FF. It's looking over a crystal-clear lake with a range of rugged, snow-capped mountains beyond. There is a canoe on the near shore, set at an attractive diagonal so as to draw the viewer's eye into the frame. I stacked a CP on top of a 2-stop GND filter. I set WB to fluorescent and turned contrast and saturation up to 11. Read it and weep, also-rans. Your kittens are terminated."

Featured Comment by John Bates: "Please, please, please let the judging rules involve the Prisoner's Dilemma."

Comments

[ctein]

Oh, be afraid, be very afraid.

pax / terrified Ctein

[Arnaud]

Speaking about events, it reminds me of this European tour you had mentioned last year, when you were planing to do a talk in London. Any news on that matter?

[Bill Corbett]

This sounds exciting!

[Clayton Lofgren]

We need to change the name here to TIP-
The Inscrutable Photographer.

[Player]

If anyone could run a photo contest, er event*, the right way, it's you Mike.

*Reminds me of Obama's "contingency operations" in lieu of "global war on terror."

Good luck!

[charlie d]

War is war no matter what you call it!

Bring on the "event"

Good one Mike

[KeithB]

Is this going to be like Survivor where all the enterers can vote each other off?

[Bryce Lee, Burlington, Ontario, Canada, eh?]

Is this a Want or a Need, Mike?
Either way, it should be some fun!

Guess I'll have to figure out how to
produce an image suitable for electronic transfer; that of itself should be
most interesting!

[Tom Duffy]

I'm going through all my cat pictures now so I can be ready! :)

[David]

Cats! Beaten to it. Fortunately, I just spent the whole morning taking macros of flowers. Even caught a bee on one of them.

[_#_]

Who's going to judge the judges? I can volunteer :)

[mike]

Must be made with b&w film.

[Seinberg]

Neato! Can you hold off on this til after May 20th (when the semester ends)? :-)

[Dave Kee]

Nekkid wimmin! Nekkid wimmin!

[ddlee]

I see your cat pictures and raise you two puppies and an evil brown bunny.

[Graham Glover]

I'm game! I'm looking forward to it.

Btw Mike, I assume the word "event" relates to its use at SoFoBoMo, which they too call an event. It's funny. You had a post on it in February, and - small world that it is - you highlighted the book of a friend of mine from my past, Amy Sakurai. It was neat getting back in touch with her. Anyway, while I've made and printed a half dozen or so books through iPhoto/Apple, there are enough challenges that I'm going to participate in the SoFoBoMo event.

[Mike Johnston]

"I assume the word 'event' relates to its use at SoFoBoMo"

Not consciously, but possibly unconsciously--

Mike

(Is unconscious plagiarism the sincerest form of flattery?)

[Kevin S.]

Booooooooo...

[Steve Greenwood]

I like "The Inscrutable Photographer..."

ANd Please, Please let at least the final judging be of actual physical PRINTS. I don't like JPEGs and don't think they represent my work. I'm a printmaker using a camera and printer.

(posted from Bilbao)

[Ahem]

I hope the judging be done blind so everyone is on equal footing.

Not THAT kind of blind :P

[Dan Khong]

Folks (and Mike) et al,

Times are bad, but I also want to enter and support the event. Mike's a good man and worthy of our support. I hope the entrance fee will be a modest and affordable one.

Meanwhile, I will bring out my dusty Kodak Retina 2c, load in some decent film and start shooting some worthwhile pictures.

Dan K.

[LN]

event |iˈvent| (noun): a social gathering, real or virtual, where imagetakers show off their best visual translations of real or created situations, which are then sorted out by a group of more or less well-known guests of the organizer. The order of sorting may determine the bestowing of tokens of appreciation, often in the form of very affordable pieces of photographic equipment, collected by the event's host from commercial entities wishing to peddle their wares.

[Carl Leonardi]

Mike, Will this be film and digital or digital only-- will it be judged on a 50% for print quality and 50% for image content.
When at RIT if you submitted a photo of a cat you were expelled-- 5 years late "Hang in there baby" cat on a rope poster made the guy tons of money. Will there be a 1 to 10 judging formula--Minor would give prints a 0 if he didn't like it or a 10 if he did--needless to say he wasn't asked to judge many contests.
The field should be very narrow-- There is no way you can pick the best out of an Adams landscape, a Farber nude or a Weston nude in a landscape
One subject like "swiss cheese" That way judges that don't like cats won't screw things up. We don't want any turn coat judges either.
Good luck.

[Maarten B.]

I bet it is called the "TOP Photo Contest Event" or TOPhCoEv.

[Paul De Zan]

Camera phones only.

[Rana]

Excited!

(And I must say, if there's going to be a nekkid wimmins category, I call for equal time and demand that there be a nekkid menz category as well.)

[Ove]

Lots of wishes here, but no one has yet proposed for a Danish paragraph in the set of rules, that's comforting. :) Will be interesting seeing how this event turns out.

[Ari]

Sounds like a rousing game of Calvinball.