Every Chapter Has Fantastic Photos: Should It Be So Hard to Find Them?

This year’s VMN Photo Contest has not only simplified technical and submission requirements, it features more categories to show off your photographic work and will be judged by amazing photographers. This is the year that every chapter should enter the VMN Photo Contest! As in the past, chapters choose the means to select the photos for submission to the statewide Photo Contest competition. Although running an internal competition may sound uncomplicated, the process can present problems with timing, accessibility, and of course, full schedules.

Make It Easy
One of the simplest ways to run the preliminary photo contest is through Facebook. The deadline to send your entries to the statewide competition is August 9, 2019, so running your contest several weeks to a month ahead of the August 9^th deadline allows everyone time to get their photos on our chapter’s Facebook and to vote.

Setting this up is very easy but is best done by the Facebook administrator. The first step is to create a Photo Album (Go to Photos>Albums>Create Album). Create an album for each contest category to make it easy for chapter members to vote on images within categories. Chapter members who want to submit photographs can submit via attaching photos to Messenger or email entries to the Facebook administrator. The administrator will have to place the images in the appropriate folder. To see the process, go to https://www.wikihow.com/Create-a-Shared-Album-in-Facebook

Once the Chapter’s submission deadline arrives, chapter members go to the photo contest folders and vote by liking the photographs. The final tally of “likes” determines which photographs should go to the statewide photo contest. After the internal contest is over, the Facebook administrator can delete the folder or make it unavailable if they would like.

Who Will Submit the Photos?
That’s up to us! Just don’t forget that a chapter can submit only one photograph in each category, and an entry form must be submitted for each image. This year, it is so easy to submit. Photographs can be uploaded instantly via a website link, and all the individual entry forms are contained within one file. Whether a chapter submits to one category or all categories, only one completed form needs to be emailed to the Photo Contest Coordinator. Entry forms should be sent the same day as the photographs.

Next Steps
Read the Photo Contest rules and find the entry form here. Also check out the new categories and the sample images to help determine which categories are right for your images.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact the VMN Photo Contest Coordinator, Debbie Pugh, at VMNPhotoContest [at] gmail.com

– Debbie Pugh, Cohort V, April 2019

Photo at top is by David Forrer, Cohort VI, of a sunrise at Lake Shenandoah, November 2018.