Contests and Giveaway News

Lots to cover today, so rather than banter, let’s get to the news about all the contest stuff going on:

The Comment Contest

Talk about a huge success – had enough feedback and ideas in this one post to really get some great creative ideas in play for the coming months for the blog – after the re-design!  Some lucky winner will be announced tomorrow (I am writing this on Sunday, while comments are still being accepted, so a winner cannot be announced right now.)

Win a Wacom Giveaway

The Learning Digital Photography giveaway thread over on Flickr has seen quite an uptick in submissions in the last week.  As the deadline approached, more people started getting their “fun” themed shots in, and there’s a lot of creative and fun photos in there.  It’s going to be tough to decide this one for sure.  Have you got your image submissions in yet?  If not, today is the last day to enter, and like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play!  You have until midnight tonight (Mountain Time), so it’s now or never!

The September Giveaway – Think in Color!

Announced briefly and teased on post #500, September’s contest is a pretty big one.  Two significant items are up for grabs this month.  First up, the winner of this contest will receive a Think Tank Multimedia Bag System (5 bags total).  For more information on this latest bag system to hit the shelves from ThinkTank Photo, you can read the review I did here, or visit their website for the specifics here.  The retail value of this set of bags is easily $350!

Second, Topaz Labs has offered up their plugin suite of actions for Photoshop to the winner of the September giveaway.  You may recall my review of the Topaz Labs Adjustment plugin here on the blog, and more of the Topaz plugins will be reviewed here during September, so stay tuned to see all the cool stuff this set can do.  The retail value of this software set is valued at $150 for the Adjustment, Denoise, Simplify, Detail, Clean and DeJPEG plugins.

So, let’s see – $350 in bags, and $150 in software = $500 in giveaway items for the September run.  That’s a lotta loot!  This means the setup will be a little more competitive than last months.  Here’s a rundown of the guidelines:

  1. Longest side of the image should be between 600-800pixels.  This makes for consistency in galleries, and also for equal view-ability in the judging phase.
  2. One photo per person, submitted through the Flickr thread, which will be created tonight at midnight.
  3. Photos must be taken within 30 days of the contest start date.  So, if you have something you took just last month, that is acceptable, but earlier archives will not be accepted.
  4. All images must be work-safe/family-friendly.
  5. This go around, the theme is:  Think in Colors (for ThinkTank and the color Topaz).  Incorporate the theme of the giveaway somehow into your photos.
  6. Since we’re talking Photoshop and plugins, it makes sense to also note that image editing is permitted, so go ahead and punish those pixels!
  7. Image submissions will be accepted starting September 1st, and will continue through Sat. Sept. 26th.

The other cool thing about the Thinktank/Topaz Labs giveaway is that the folks at Topaz Labs have offered to the winner that their photo be displayed on Topaz Labs website (along with photo credit given, naturally).  This is, of course, totally optional, but definitely a cool feather to have in ones’ cap.  The caveat here is that the submitting photographer would have to be at least 18 years old.

Phew – that is a lot of contest news!  In one sidenote about the blog, a little administrative note that the B&H Photo affiliate link is back, so if you are thinking of purchasing some gear through B&H, if you use the link above, though your price stays the same, B&H will send a few cents back this way to help offset the expense of hosting.  (It literally is just a few cents per purchase, so go ahead and spend a fortune!) 🙂  So much for a hardware review today…I’ll be back tomorrow with the last post for August, and the announcement of the Comment Contest winner!  In the meantime, happy shooting!

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