Bushwalk Australia

Now that the 2009 monthly photo competitions are all wrapped up, it's time to move on to the 2009 Photo of the Year competition. Similarly to the previous year, we are running 5 simultaneous preliminary competitions (themed 'Animal', 'Vegetable', 'Mineral', 'Water' and 'Why I Walk').

Once the 5 preliminaries have been decided, the winners will be combined with the 12 monthly winners and all 17 will be entered into the final competition.

There are 5 preliminary competitions open now. The themes for each are fairly broad, and should provide ample opportunity to enter multiple photos (up to one photo per preliminary competition).

Of course, all photos must have been taken in 2009, and should have EXIF data still embedded to prove it. The subject of each photo should fit the theme of the preliminary competition it is being submitted into. A photo may only be entered into 1 competition, and photos that have already been entered into the monthly competitions are not eligible for the preliminary competitions.

The competition entry/upload forms are all available by links on the Photo Competition home page, but here are some direct links for you to use:

TASMANIA 2009 PRELIMINARIES:

• Animal - at least one animal or part thereof
• Vegetable - plant matter of some kind
• Mineral - something with no biological origins (eg, rocks or rocky mountain tops)
• Water - in some form (liquid, ice, gas, vapour)
• Why I Walk - illustrate why bushwalking is a worthwhile activity

As usual, the rules for each competition are on the entry forms (at each of the pages linked to in the lists above).

Please post here if you have any questions.

Entries close for all of the preliminary competitions on the 28th of February.

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AUSTRALIA Photo of the Year Competition

Note that there will be a Photo of the Year Competition for the whole of Australia also, however, for this year it will consist of only the 12 monthly winners. It is anticipated that we should have enough momentum in the following year for a full blown Australia-wide competition with preliminaries similarly to the Tasmanian competition.

This is just a reminder that for all of our photo competitions (photo of the year, and photo of the month), the rules state that the photo must be taken in a specific region (eg, Tasmania), and if the image itself does not make this clear, the title/description should. Eg,

The primary subject of the photo should be in Tasmania and the title/description should make this clear if the image content itself does not

We've been getting a few entries where the location of the photo is not entirely obvious, and the title doesn't specifically make it clear that the photos are in Tasmania (eg, for the Tasmanian competitions).

So please keep this in mind for future entries.

The competition entries for the Tasmanian Photo of the Year are looking good so far. Keep them coming... 3 weeks left to get your entries in.

I was hoping to submit a pic which I have previously used in a comp (and got zero votes for!) however in accordance to the rules thats not allowed:

Same (or similar) photo must not have been entered in any other site photo competitions (eg, must not have already been entered in one of the monthly photo competitions)

I was hoping for an exception as I didn't get a chance to fix up the pic last time as I only just had enough time to get it on the computer and uploaded to the site in time for the monthly comp (with minutes to spare!).

If its a problem though I've got plenty of other pics for that category.

It is against the rules, as they currently stand. If people unanimously thought this was a bad rule, it could be changed, but I it's probably not fair to make a one off exception.

Does anyone else have any thoughts on this rule? Should previously entered photos be allowed in these additional competitions? Perhaps so long as they've not actually won a competition before? Or should it be left as is. Once entered in one competition, it cannot be entered in another?

I can sympathise with the desire to put the best photo in, but I think we can take the competitions too seriously.
Agonising over what to put in, I have often thought after the voting that I would have done better with a different picture.
So I would say keep the rules as they are and ride with the bumps. Its not going to make a lot of difference anyway.

I wonder how long before photo of the year comes from one of these curious additional categories anyway?

PS - has the robot swallowed the Jan 2010 photo competition entries?

eggs wrote:I can sympathise with the desire to put the best photo in, but I think we can take the competitions too seriously.
Agonising over what to put in, I have often thought after the voting that I would have done better with a different picture.
So I would say keep the rules as they are and ride with the bumps. Its not going to make a lot of difference anyway.

I wonder how long before photo of the year comes from one of these curious additional categories anyway?

I'm considering adding a "People" category next year (photos that feature people or evidence of people). Inspired in part by the long debate on the honesty of wilderness photography in another topic, but also because there are actually a lot of people who like photos with people in them (my wife always votes for the picture with a tent in it, if I ask her to vote, and there is such a photo).

PS - has the robot swallowed the Jan 2010 photo competition entries?

Oops! The 'autobot' always posts these to a hidden moderators-only forum so we can check them first to make sure they're OK, then we manually move them to the competition forum. I forgot to do the second bit this morning. Fixed now.

Bugger...just realised that you can vote for three images. Is there any way of getting my additional (unused) votes in? So far I've voted on 'Animal' 'Water' and 'Vegetable' categories.

stoogest wrote:Bugger...just realised that you can vote for three images. Is there any way of getting my additional (unused) votes in? So far I've voted on 'Animal' 'Water' and 'Vegetable' categories.

Not really. Sorry, I should have made this clearer. It's on the news item on the index page, but only in very small print on the polls themselves.

For anyone who has not voted yet, you can select up to 3 photos from each of the photo of the year competitions to vote for.

(I was also going to send out a mass email telling everyone this, along with other site news for the year, but there's too many email addresses these days to handle it well without taking days to send them all).

No probs. Thanks for the quick response.
Andrew.

Am I the only one who seems to have trouble finding the shots?
Where are the 2009 shots?
Cheers, Ian

Go to the home page - scan down to Gallery and note the subheading "Photo Competitions"

Click on this and it takes you to a page which under "topics" shows all the current competitions as well as all the past ones.

PS http://bushwalk.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=22

Eggs is correct. The competitions with a poll currently running are at the top of the long list, with the 'sticky' exclamation mark icon.

For anyone who wants short cuts, here's the direct links to the 5 preliminary polls:

• Animal
• Vegetable
• Mineral
• Water
• Why I Walk

A couple of these polls have been tied, so both winners will be included in the final competition, which will be posted shortly (when I get time ).