Monday, June 16, 2014

New photo contest: "Person with a bag" deadline 6.30.2014, cash prizes

Contest has ended. The winder was: 



New photo contest:

"Person with a bag" 

I'm awarding three prizes of $100 each for what I judge to be the most interesting or pleasing photographs sent to me before the end of Monday 30 June 2014.

This, plus a first prize which is sponsored by Waterfield Design, see below.
  • Each author may send one (1) picture.
  • The picture may not previously have won prizes or have been published in a professional publication, on- or offline. 
  • The author's name must be in the file name. (Example: joe-joeson-13.jpg)
  • No text added to the picture, please.
  • Shortest edge should be at least 1200 pixels, longest edge less than 3000 pixels.
  • JPG format. Maximum file size: 2 megabytes.
  • Photos may be color or monochrome. 
  • Judging is entirely subjective. Fulfilment depends on a minimum of quality and quantity of submissions. 
I acquire the rights to publish for free any entry here and perhaps use it in promotion for the contest or blog. Entrants keep all other rights.
I plan that early in of July, I will post several of the best entries, and the winners. I require a Paypal address to pay to, or a physical one for cash or the first price.

Send entries to my eolake-[at]-stobblehouse.com address.
(I will give an email confirmation when I get your entry.)

Notice that we are not necessarily talking about "bag people" here (I fact I prefer that the bag not be plastic or paper), but rather simply "person with a bag", which is a very broad spectrum indeed, and would include street photography, documentary, portraits, and whatnot.

Waterfield Design has kindly donated their Muzetto bag for the our first prize. It is a brilliant and original bag, and was in fact the very first one I bought from them myself. It is perfect for urban use, college, work...
It is a very versatile and stylish bag for any gender or age, and it will be in the medium size, it will fit a 11-inch laptop or of course any current tablet, and more. It will be like the one on the left in the picture below (maybe a bit smaller), brown leather with black accents. Subtly beautiful. (If you'd like a different size or accent color, you can ask for that, but it might take a couple weeks extra to deliver it.)




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This is not a casual sponsorship. The contest was inspired by me getting my new Waterfield Outbag duffel bag. (See my recent review.)

37 comments:

Russ said...

TC[Girl], I always shoot at highest resolution/largest file size and then scale down in Photoshop if needed.

In PS, select the crop tool and in the upper tool bar set the dimensions to the desired size in pixels or inches (ex. 2000 px). Then crop the entire image and when you save to a new file name you'll have the ability to change the quality setting (1-12) which automatically shows you the expected file size.

If you don't have Photoshop, I like to use IrfanView which is freeware. Open the file, click on Image | Resize\Resample and you get a dialog box where you can change your image dimensions in either pixels or inches.

Hope this helps!

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Always make a copy of the file and save the original.

There is lots of cheap software and freeware.
For our purposes set the longest side to between 2000 and 3000 pixels. And set the JPEG compression setting when saving to somewhere in the middle or a bit higher.
In Photoshop I think a setting of eight in the 1 to 12 scale is good for most purposes.

TC [Girl] said...
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TC [Girl] said...

Could either one of you tell me the pixels I need to set for a file to become 1MB, please?

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It depends both on how much detail is in the picture (makes for bigger files), and what compression setting is used.

I would try doing it with the compression setting instead.
You can use trial and error, or see if the app you're saving with tells you how big the file will become at a given compression setting.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

I've updated this post with a version of your file.
Turned out that a nicely high compression setting of 11 in Photoshop gave a 980kB file, so that should do you well.

TC [Girl] said...

Thanks, Eo... I was, actually, trying to set up a profile image (to load this image), using the one that I am currently using, but I couldn't get it smaller than 1.56MB and it wasn't accepted, so...I am using my old one on there... :-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Any photo can be adjusted to any size.

I was not allowed to download it, so I had to crop it a little in the screenshot, to not get the big labels...

https://www.dropbox.com/s/d7mwv1z8n7kkifu/Screen%20Shot%202014-07-23%20at%2015.40.05.JPG

under 200kB

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

... feel free to use that version if you like.

TC [Girl] said...

I have run out of disc space from an apparent hidden Dropbox cache that I didn't know that I had to babysit... I can't even load your blog and am writing from my phone...

Been trying to type the proper command to see this fricken hidden folder, since last night, but no luck, yet... I was going to contact you to see if this had ever happened to you, before; apparently, this is common w/the Air...wish I had known about this, earlier... Can you, possibly, help, please? Not sure what I am doing wrong...

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TC [Girl] said...

Well, apparently, that didn't do the trick; I got this message, so...will have to keep at it, until I don't see that message, any longer... :-P

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Woa, that suck. I've never heard of that before.

I would only be able to do what you're probably doing: ask around in forums (apple's or others) which I find by typing in my question in Google.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

To empty the Trash, go to Finder, and in the Finder menu select Empty Trash.

TC [Girl] said...
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Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Yes, the "Airbook" has the advantage and disadvantage that it has no hard disk, only a Solid State Disk, which is 4 times faster, but much smaller per dollar.

Still with the hundreds of gigabytes which has run through my Dropbox, I better look at that cache! Thanks.

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

There was nothing in my cache.
And it is supposed (according to that article) to clear out every three days. So maybe it is a bug. (Ask Dropbox.)

By the way, online they keep nice backups, in case you lose something. I think it's for a month.

TC [Girl] said...

I tried to reply, from my phone, and, oddly, often, it won't accept it...but wanted to comment, anyway... :-)

Yes, the "Airbook" has the advantage and disadvantage that it has no hard disk, only a Solid State Disk, which is 4 times faster, but much smaller per dollar.

I have to confess that I didn't do much research; all I know was that it had me at (surprise!!) "light and fast," after having had PC's up until now!!

Still with the hundreds of gigabytes which has run through my Dropbox, I better look at that cache!

I teased you and suggested that you might just be sitting on a World Record of GB's!! ;-)

Thanks.

And...knowing the end results, I'm still glad that you have heard about this cache issue, now... :-)

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There was nothing in my cache.

Well...that is good!! But, durn...still doesn't explain your "clogs." :-(

And it is supposed (according to that article) to clear out every three days.

Admittedly, I was starting to break out in a sweat, when I found that article and just skimmed it and downloaded that sweeper as fast as I could!! :-P I'll go back and read the article a little more thoroughly and see if I can find the thing that mentioned it being an issue, particularly, w/the Airs...

So maybe it is a bug. (Ask Dropbox.)

Yes; good idea... I'll look around... Oh and...seems that I remember there being an Apple App that was supposed to make it easier to keep an eye on it...

By the way, online they keep nice backups, in case you lose something. I think it's for a month.

Good to know; thanks... And thanks for the reminder; should have thought to look in Pogue's book, to see if there's anything written about how the back-up behaves...would hate to lose ALL those images I loaded to try to create a 2nd back-up... (I think it's a TB of memory HD) I'm trying to figure out what to do for a third, now that CD's are going away... Can't imagine trying to print out a gob load of them, much like the gazillions of OLD pics my mom has...in a box!! :-P I have thought of creating books for each of the kids, for their 18th birthdays, but...there's a GOB that are just general stuff, too... Have wondered if I should try to create some coffee tables...if any of it is worth doing that with...

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

It was my 5-6 year old Mac Pro which had "clogs". I got the new one a couple months back, and it's a delight.

TC [Girl] said...

It was my 5-6 year old Mac Pro which had "clogs"

Yes...I do remember that it was your old one; just always wondered if you found out what the cause was...

I got the new one a couple months back, and it's a delight.

So glad to hear it! I really enjoy my Air, too! :-D

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

TG,
Did you get your prize, the Waterfield bag yet?

TC [Girl] said...

Yes, thank you very much, Eo!! You beat me to sending you a thank you card; we were away for a few days... I LOVE it!! :-D

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Some good pics there, like 215, far-away ferry.

TC [Girl] said...

Thank you... Yes, despite the rather dreary weather, it made for some pretty dramatic clouds, that evening... :-) I'm hoping to go back, another time, this summer, and try for a clear night, up in/on the Space Needle, as it rained both times we went up; there and...that glass gallery...I'm dying to go in and shoot!! There's also a beautiful beach and rainforest up that way that I would like to go and shoot; we'll see if I can get away, again, in the next month or so... :-)

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Went to see another lighthouse about 4 hours south of us... I couldn't stop taking pics of the amazing blues in this place... Had trouble deciding which pics to cut, because there is a different aspect featured in about 3 of those lighthouse snaps, either that massive rock, the lighthouse, or the boats out there... This lighthouse is on private land, so this is the best view a person can get of it...unless they have a boat, of course... :-P

The "puff" in the water is a blow, from a grey whale; didn't see much else of it (there were at least 2); and...there's a gob load of seals out on all that rock!! They were covering every square inch of that real estate and were quite noisy!! :-P

TC [Girl] said...

I've started a photo page, finally... :-D

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

Cool.
Anybody with something to show should have a site, is my view.

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TC [Girl] said...

The other thing I like about FineArtAmerica...I can make/sell phone cases of my images, too, so I will probably do that...as advertising, perhaps, eventually... :-D

Looks like there's an Artwork Feed and a Blog Feed for those that want to follow, as well; will probably start an art blog, eventually...

TC [Girl] said...

Pretty stoked to wake up to the following e-mail:

"We are very pleased to announce that we've begun producing and shipping orders from our new fulfillment center... in the United Kingdom! Effective immediately, if a buyer purchases a canvas print and ships it to any address in the UK or Europe, the order will be fulfilled by our UK fulfillment center. What does that mean? It means that the order will ship to any address in the UK within one business day... and to any address in Europe within 2 - 5 business days! It also means low shipping rates... no import taxes... and a whole new market of buyers for your artwork! We're starting out with canvas prints, and we'll be expanding to include other products at the UK fulfillment center very, very quickly. The UK center will be fulfilling orders for all of our websites, including Pixels.com, FineArtAmerica.com, FineArtEurope.com, Instaprints.com, ArtistWebsites.com, and all of the others. This includes your personal Artist Website and your shopping cart widgets, as well. If the buyer is shipping the order to the UK or Europe, then the order will automatically be produced at the UK fulfillment center so that the buyer receives the order as quickly as possible with the lowest possible shipping charge. If the order is being shipped to the United States, Canada, or anywhere else in the Western Hemisphere, then the order will continue to be produced at one of our U.S. fulfillment centers. If you've read this far... here comes the fun part. Starting now through August 31st, we're offering FREE SHIPPING on all canvas orders that get shipped to any country in the UK or Europe. You don't need a special code to receive the free shipping offer. Just add a canvas print to your shopping cart, select a shipping address in the UK or Europe, and you're all set. In less than a week, we'll deliver a museum-quality masterpiece to your doorstep with a 30-day money-back guarantee! Tell your friends... tell your family... tell your followers on Facebook and Twitter... your online art business just went global! This is just the beginning of our expansion all over the world... stay tuned... About Fine Art America Fine Art America has revolutionized the way that artwork is bought and sold around the world. With a few simple clicks, artists and photographers can upload their images, set their prices, and instantly sell prints to a global audience of art collectors. Fine Art America fulfills each order on behalf of the artists - taking care of the printing, framing, matting, packaging, shipping, collecting payments from the buyers, and sending profits to the artists. Each print is manufactured at Fine Art America's production facility and delivered "ready-to-hang" with a 30-day money-back guarantee."

Going to load more of my images and see if my Aunt or Cousin's wife would like a small canvas... :-) My dream would be to be able to travel, in Europe, one of these days, and be able to capture some pretty images/landscapes (etc) there, and, hopefully, be able to share some of same w/people there, someday; this, most certainly, would make things a little less burdensome... :-) Do you have an account w/any of these companies that they mention?

Hope all is well with you... :-)

Eolake Stobblehouse said...

No I don't. Yet.
This is very kool to know, though, thanks.
The value of a really good fulfilment service just can't be overestimated. Dealing with the physical drama world has always been the pestilence of the artist.

TC [Girl] said...

Got a notice that they're shipping metals, from the UK site, today...free shipping until end of month...