Caudata.org Calendar - Winners and Purchasing Details

By the way, here's a relevant link on HM's customs and excise's website:
http://customs.hmrc.gov.uk/channelsPortalWebApp/channelsPortalWebApp.portal?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=pageTravel_ShowContent&propertyType=document&resetCT=true&id=HMCE_CL_001454

You’re right, John. “Seized” was probably too strong a word (it sounded more glamorous at the time ). The calendar is through customs and the post office sent a note today saying they have the calendar but I need to pay a £9 ($18 ish) “customs charge” before they’ll give it to me. So yes, the post office is the bogie man here.

I think I’ve just been unlucky – this is the first time I’ve been charged a customs fee by the post office and according to my e-bay obsessed friends it’s a fairly random event. I will ask for a break down of the charge although I expect the answer will be that it’s a standard “admin” fee.

Mark - yes, that makes sense. I used to order a lot of things from the US when I lived in Bristol. I never once had any "customs" issue. I think the charge you're paying is really just a post office admin fee for scrutinising your package for potential customs charges (of which there probably were none). They probably just picked your package at random from foreign packages.

Again, commiserations on having to deal with this and pay that extra charge.

Wow. That looks soo good.. I will have to buy one!

*Buys Calendar and smiles*

Mine arrived 2 days ago. I love the big size, and its now proudly hanging on my wall.

Hope there will be another one next year. But I think it would be a good idea to start organising it already in late summer, so it would be ready by around October/November. That way many more of them would be ordered as christmas presents

I forgot to mention that after my post office/customs problems I finally got my calendar! It’s very good – I even hung it above some newts ! You’re right Sherri, this year we’ll start nice an early.

If for some insane reason you haven’t bought one yet just remember there are still 11 months of wonderful newt action left on this calendar.

Well considering we first started talking about the Calendar in what, August? Perhaps we should start now...

Yes! Lets start soon. I have a new camera. No more crappy pictures on my part. lol

Unless anyone posts objections in the near future, I would like to use snippets of the testimonials here for the calendar info on cafepress. Please let me know if you would like to be excluded from this.

John,
You specifically have my permission to use anything I have written, if you deem it would be useful in promoting Caudata.org and/or the calendar.

I just got my calander yesterday, and it looked pretty good, but I did feel that my picture came out much worse them I had expected. It seemed to really stand out with some kind of blue wash out.

I know that camera I used was not the greatest by todays standards, and my new one takes better shots, but that picture just did not take well to being printed. I feel like if I had a chance to see it and know it would turn out like that, I almost would have not have it in the calander, just to be fair. But I do like that shot and was glad to get it in, I just wish I could have had it come out better. Oh well.

The Tylototritons were somewhat dominating, I know we had issues with some poeple getting lazy and not following through with getting their photos in, but that struck me as odd, and there was no taricha either, also a bummer. But in all the calander was a great idea and I hope to get some shots to be considered for next year when the time comes.

Thanks to John and Mark for getting it all put together despite all problems.

I grant you that it is different in hue to your original. However that photo had quite a few tweaks done to it and I played with various versions. That version that went to print seemed to be the most neutral to me. I'm sorry if that bothered you.

In honest appraisal, it didn't meet the resolution and sharpness standard I had set - some of the photos including yours really had to be pushed about 500% beyond their limits to fill the calendar page at the appropriate resolution. There was a bunch of hot pixels on the original too.

We agreed that axolotls should figure in the calendar and we had a lot of very disappointing fare in terms of picture quality (the stuff I mentioned earlier as well as actual composition, etc). Had there not been a bias towards axolotls, I wouldn't have accepted your photo as being up to print standard based on the resolution alone.

Regarding the Tylos, yeah there was a lot. That's because many of the Tylo entries were of a better resolution and composition standard than the competition. If you had seen some of the photos we got you'd have been shocked. In retrospect, yours might have been high enough in resolution to print on a postcard, and that was in the top 50% in terms of resolution...

A lot of species and families were missing. That wasn't out of choice. Personally I'd rather have a calendar of a decent standard with overlap in species than one with a lot of bad photos and a spectrum.

I guess what I'm saying is that I/we did our best with what we had. Between the main 3 of us (Mark, Jen and I) we deserve a joint sainthood .