Park Cameras Facebook Competition

Exciting news!  Just found out today that one of my pictures has won second prize in a Facebook photo competition organised by Park Cameras.  The theme was "Christmas" and so I entered an image of a robin in a suitably festive wintry tree.  I must admit that I entered this competition fairly early after it was announced and so forgot about it - there were only two other entries when I entered my shot and I hadn't realised that one of the other ones was also a robin.  I nearly deleted the email telling me I had won one of the two prizes available - a Canon A3+ sized photo printer!

The timing couldn't be more perfect as I am about to print off the final versions of the prints I want to include in my university application portfolio.  The Canon Pixma Pro-100 that Park are sending me has had great reviews and is the new model of the Canon 9000 Mk2 that I currently use.  I'll hopefully get it in the post in the next few days and I'll do a review of it and provide some comparison between that and the older version.

Here is the shot that won the competition and below it my robin picture.  I've had a look through the 200+ entries that Park Cameras received for this competition and picked out a few of my favorites.

Edinburgh Ramsey Garden - Tim Hodges

A truly deserving winner that captured this beautiful spot in amazing light.  This I could easily see being snapped up by manufacturers of Christmas Cards.

Winter Robin - Paul Fox :)

This robin lives right outside the office window where I've worked for the past three years (or at least a long line of similarly looking robins has done so).  Like lots of urban robins he's gotten very brave and doesn't seem to mind humans getting close to him.  This was a particularly cold morning and we had some unusual frost formations here in Shropshire and so I had my Canon G9 with me as it has a great macro mode.  I noticed the robin sat perfectly in the tree above me as I was shooting and chanced a couple of shots of him - this was  the best of the bunch I took.  Thank you Mr Robin for winning me a lovely prize.

The following images are taken from the competition pages.  Because of the automated entry system used by facebook very few of the entries had titles or any details of the photographer - all copyright etc remains with them!

Harsh Winter - Uncredited

Mary - Uncredited

All things Twinkle at Christmas - Jeanette62

Santa - Uncredited

I've really started to enjoy entering these competitions.  Begrudgingly I'd encourage you all to have a go - but that means I'm going to have to up my game to try to beat you.  I've found that you can never really tell what the judges are looking for (or the quality of the other images in the running) for a prize.  Don't be afraid to enter and if you don't expect to win and you can only ever be delighted if your name gets a mention or better still you actually win something.  Over 3000 people 'like' Park Cameras on facebook and they have now all seen the two winning images, more will be on Park's weekly email listing - that's great publicity for any aspiring photographer.