2008 Calendar Compeition Winning Entries

John

John

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Well here are the winners of the 2008 Caudata.org Calendar Competition:

Wouter Beukema
John Clare - I did not vote for myself!
Travis Dimler (2 photos)
Juraj Lezovic (2 photos)
Ryan St. Laurent
Jay Sommers (2 photos)
Henk Wallays (2 photos)
Daniel Weiner (2 photos)

You can see the photos here, along with some comments from myself (feel free to add your own!):

http://www.caudata.org/photoplog/index.php?c=123

Well done to all of the winners - your photos are simply beautiful. There are quite a few "double" winners this year. I want to assure everyone that this is simply down to the quality of the photos these guys submitted. Thank you to everyone for entering, thank you to Mark for his hard work of organising the photos and the voting and thank you to the voters (mostly moderators this year).

The calendar will be available by Wednesday, all in good time for Chrimbo!
 
All winners will receive 1 year's donor status (which will be added to any current donor time they have). This will be updated this week.
 
Great, the winners look nice, congrats everyone.
 
Not to sound rude.

I see some nice photos, but how fair is it that they have multiple photos that won.

I would imagine it should had been a bit more equal in opportunity here. If they had one winning photo it should have been it seeing on how we were limited to the amount of submissions to begin with.
 
Thanks for telling us how you feel Jamie. I understand where you're coming from. My answer to you is that we allow multiple entries from one person. When it comes to judging we have to pick 13 top quality photos for the calendar. In all honesty, if we were to allow only one winning photo per person the calendar might not have 13 top quality photos on it. Most of the entries were indistinct (i.e. not sharp), badly coloured, too low in resolution, over exposed or under exposed. Photos that have too many bad qualities automatically get disqualified from the judging phase (including your own photos, Jamie, I'm afraid). We want to get these photos to 300 dots per inch at 17.5 inches x 11 inches (that's 44.5 cm x 28 cm). That requires us to push the limits of the photos we receive. We make this clear in the competition details thread. Even most of the winners had to be treated in photoshop for dust, sharpness, graininess, colour tint and other concerns.

We did cap the maximum number of winners per person at 2 this year - last year I think Henk got more than that on the calendar but it was the same situation then, if not worse - we needed Henk's quality photos to make a quality calendar.

Most of the photos that made the top 18 or so that were not included were insufficient in resolution and sharpness to scale to the dimensions/dpi necessary for the calendar. We tried to make this clear to people after last year's competition but it's obviously not sinking in - we need sharp photos before anything else, or rather, we need photos as sharp as you can make them.

After finishing with the photos yesterday I had already decided to implement a new rule, and it's quite simply this: from now on there will be a maximum of two entries per person. I'm saying this for everyone. To make this rule stick we will only accept the first two photos submitted by someone in chronological order - if you email us 10 photos we'll take the first two, even if they're on the same email - we won't look at the rest, in order to make it fair to everyone who did obey the rules.

Having said this, unless there is a large increase in the quality of photos submitted next year, I can see us having several people winning twice again.

To address your statement "I would imagine it should had been a bit more equal opportunity here", it is perfectly equal. If you produce a good photo that meets the competition criteria, you are in with a shot of winning. If you produce an indistinct photo you are not. And before you think "I don't have all that fancy camera gear those guys do", Ryan's photo is as good as any of the photos taken by people with "pro gear". The equipment doesn't hurt, but skill and an eye for a good photo trump equipment almost every time.

I hope this clarifies things for you and for anyone else. By all means ask more questions though, I will be happy to answer them for you.
 
I'm going to do my best next year. This only pushes me more to buy that macro lens... I'm more of a close-up guy, but the standard lens on my D40 do not allow anything closer than the entries I made.
 
Macro lenses are nice but many of the winners were not photographed with one.
 
John said:
Macro lenses are nice but many of the winners were not photographed with one.
Click to expand...

I know it's not required, it's more a personal preference :) Technology isn't the biggest thing that counts to make great photos. Some of the best photos I took were made years ago with my webcam slash digicam...

Anyway, when will we be able to buy the calendar?
 
Today or tomorrow.
 
Firstly, this years calendar looks really great and I can’t wait to have one hanging on my wall. Big congratulations to those who won.

Coen, your photos were of a good standard and you were not so far off being a finalist. I hope that encourages you for next year.

In an ideal world we would have 13 shots from 13 unique photographers. This is only possible if we have a large volume of high quality entries and this year we didn’t get that. We simply vote on the shots we think will look best on the calendar not on photographers - after all this is a commercial product and it needs to be of the highest quality.
 
John,

I'd ask that you reconsider the 2 submissions per person rule and keep the 2 acceptances per person instead. I loved seeing the variety of photos from everyone and there were several fave's of mine (what I saw, not what I took) that didn't make it. That they didn't make the calender doesn't diminish my appreciation for them. I'm glad I had the chance to see them. Just my tuppence for what it's worth (thanks 'Bell)...

Brian
 
buying a calendar

John said:
Today or tomorrow.
Click to expand...
Hi, How much are your calendars and where can I buy one, I am far away in Australia so I would have to get one soon if I want it for a xmas pressie.
 
Yes I am with kassie. I had a look around but can't see if you can order them (sorry if it is obvious and I have missed it). In Australia as well. :)
 
Hi, Sarah, maybe we have to post a new thread to get a reply about the calendars, someone must know...............................Kassie
 
They are not in the store yet. Here is a link to the store:
http://www.cafepress.com/caudata
if you order one, I believe they can ship it anywhere in the world. When you order it, you can read what they have to say about international shipping rates and times. You can check the store daily until you see it listed there, I know I'll be :supercool: !
 
I'm working on it right now. Very large files take a long time to upload. Hang in there.
 
Got it. mine will arrive approx. the 13th of december. It will fit nice in the future newtroom i'm creating in our new house.
 
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