Readers' Pictures: 'People Working'

All day tomorrow, Saturday, we're having a quick, impromptu picture-and-writing contest.

The theme is "People Working." Your perspective on what "people working" means can be your own—conventional or original, classic or quirky. The picture can be any interpretation of one or more people doing a job, or at work, or working on something.

If you think you have a picture that suits, and you want to share it and don't mind having it judged, please send it to us. Send one picture only, along with 25–125 words about the picture.

Our anonymous celebrity judge will pick a generous handful of entries which we'll put up for discussion on the site within a week or so. Finally, from those finalists, Mike will pick three overall winners to receive first, second, and third prizes, plus a few "honorable mentions."

Should be a fun way to see some work and discover different peoples' takes on the theme.

How to Play (Rules and Regs)

One picture per entrant. (Seriously, please send one picture only.) The picture must be your own—previously unpublished, taken by you, and for which you own all the rights. (All rights stay with you. You grant us permission to publish your picture on TOP but we will make no claim to your ownership rights at any time.)

If the picture you send is more than a year or two old, tell us the year it was taken. Also, if you're 18 or under, please mention it.

Format
The JPEG picture must be 800 pixels wide, sRGB color space (even if B&W), and not watermarked.

Send it to me in the body of an email [UPDATE 10 p.m. Saturday 8/10: Contest is now closed. No more entries will be accepted]. For your email, use the subject line:

peopleworking

Just the letters, no spaces, all lower case.

Make sure the subject line of the email is "peopleworking" (no quotes) or it will not get to the right mailbox.

Include your real name!

We will not open attachments. Anything outside the word count limits will be disqualified. Your writings could be edited for sense 'n' syntax. DO NOT send words separately from pictures—if you forget the words the first time, resend everything together. (TOP's Incompetent Assistant is not nearly organized enough to match up pictures and words sent hours apart, believe me.)

The deadline is 10 p.m. Saturday night, Central Time (Chicago USA time zone). (At ten o'clock sharp Saturday night, once the contest closes, I'll announce what the prizes will be. No hints, but I can say they'll be better than bubblegum and a new propeller for your beanie.)

This is sorta just for TOP regular readers (commenters or lurkers, doesn't matter), so if you would be so kind, please don't go blabbing about it all over the wild and woolley Internet. We'd prefer for it not to go viral (hence the short notice). Of course, anyone can come read The Online Photographer any time, and they're welcome, but we don't want to encourage an avalanche of outsiders who will swoop in just for the contest and never visit again.

So, to recap: your email should contain:

• The subject line peopleworking
• your JPEG, 800 pixels wide, sRGB
• Your 25–125 word written caption or paragraph, and
• The real name under which you are normally and usually known.

If you have any questions, please read this post again!

Have fun. Stay loose!

Mike
(Thanks to anonymous)

Original contents copyright 2013 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Comments

[Simon Robinson]

Hi Mike,

Can I just clarify what you mean about the photo being "unpublished"? I have a photo that has been on my website/blog only - does that mean it's been published?

Cheers
Simon

[MartinP]

A prize might be "Better than bubblegum and a new propeller for your beanie" . . . That's a very creative way to solve the problem of the D800 ownership! ;o)

[toto]

If it's vertical, should it still be 800 pixels wide, or should it be 800 pixels tall?

I can't believe you're giving away your D800 :)

[Nick]

Hi Mike, sorry if this is a dumb question: if I've posted a picture on Flickr, does that count as "previously published"? I suspect it does, although I hope it doesn't! And for the benefit of other readers, what else might count as published or not published? Thanks!

[No, that's okay. --Mike]

[Shawn McBride]

Well I'm stumped. I don't think I have any photographs that could remotely be categorized as "people working", not even bad ones. It's all family, leisure, or artistic pursuit. Now, if the category were "adorable pictures of your three-year-old daughter" I might have a few contenders.

[William Barnett-Lewis]

Not a topic I shoot very much, though I've sent a shot along as per the instructions. If nothing else, it's on I enjoy and it's always good to share things like that. Thank you for the opportunity.

[Daryl]

This reminds me that I really do need to curate and tag my photos. I just submitted my entry. Thanks for doing this!

[Steve Barnett]

I also question what 800 pixels wide means, and since I have entered a portrait format picture felt I should send one of each in two separate emails, one 800 pixels tall, and one 800 pixels wide. It would have also been better to know the dpi, 72dpi (for instance) would have made the file sizes smaller.

[ed g.]

Huh, Flickr doesn't count as published? That's not what I would have expected. I guess that's true of stuff on personal websites, too?

I think I'll send something new anyway.

[Francisco Cubas]

Mike, It's been a pain to put a picture in the body of the email. I never needed or wanted to do that in my life. Turns out that most web mail services don't allow it. I had to use for the first time the mail app from the OSX to do it.

Sorry about the four emails, the last one should work, I hope.

[Lynn]

Mike, beginner's mistake - you should've included a file size limit. Isn't hindsight wonderful?

Many people don't realise a web photo should be be resized at 72dpi. That would account for the large file sizes you are receiving.

[Hi Lynn, No, 800 pixels is 800 pixels on screen. Resolution settings don't matter. --Mike]

[David Bryan Lackey]

Well, after reading TOP for the last six years I finally decided to participate in something! Thank you for an interesting topic, I shall now put this topic title on my list for future "people working" motifs!

[-et-]

I entered a shot that I took today just because of your specified topic. Actually, I shot four very different subjects that I felt complied with your criteria, and then had to choose between them to meet the "single entry" criteria - harder than I expected. Thanks for providing an incentive to push the shutter button on a slightly different subject than is usual for me.

Like one of the comments above, I was not certain whether or not to interpret your "800 pixels wide" rule literally, or to treat it as 800 pixels on the long dimension. I finally decided to interpret you literally.

- Tom -

[Lars S.]

@Steve Barnett: When the pixel dimensions are set, changing the dpi won't do anything to the size of the picture. Dpi is mostly only of intrest when you want to print, then you can specify the print size and dpi and the pixel dimensions are calculated accordingly.

[David Paterson]

Can I echo what Steve Barnett said - for the internet it makes no difference WHATSOEVER what dpi is set. The only thing that matters is how many pixels long (or tall) the image is.

[Fred]

Mike, I was looking forward to entering, but instructions came on the eve of a busy weekend.
I hope this is successful and you do it again.