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1\/640, f\/9, ISO 400, Canon 40D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS\u00a0USM + EF 1.4 Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\nI’ve explained in a fairly recent post<\/a> why I don’t enter photo contests. The only one I’ve ever entered was way back when I was a novice bird photographer (2008 I think) when I entered this\u00a0juvenile\u00a0Burrowing Owl image in the\u00a0Utah State Fair Photography Contest and won first place in my category. To be perfectly honest the only reason I’m including this image today is because I felt I\u00a0needed to include a photo in the post and this one\u00a0has a connection to contests… \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Readers will remember that exactly two weeks ago I uncharacteristically\u00a0promoted a nature photography contest on my blog. Nancy Stocker, a representative of the Audubon Society of Greater Denver, had written me and asked for some help promoting their contest. This was her email on November 23rd:<\/p>\n I plugged their contest here on Feathered Photography for three reasons: its primary purpose was to raise money to be used for conservation education of youngsters and others, I liked the ethics of the contest rules and (to be perfectly honest once again) I liked Nancy’s style and manner\u00a0in our extended correspondence. It sounded like they urgently\u00a0needed some help for a very good cause so I decided to provide the plug.<\/p>\n In comments on that post and feedback from social media I learned that some of my readers and others were considering entering the contest and\u00a0some folks posted the link to my post and\/or the contest itself\u00a0on social media in order to promote it. But of course I had no idea how far it might go or how many would actually enter the contest<\/a>, especially because at that\u00a0point the deadline for entry was only a week away (Dec. 1).<\/p>\n But two days ago I received\u00a0the following\u00a0very good news from Nancy. Among other things she said:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ok, here’s my take on all this.\u00a0For reasons out of their control the\u00a0contest was hurting for entries only eight days before entry deadline. Seven days before deadline I published my post and apparently my readers and\/or followers of my readers on social media responded in numbers that contributed significantly to “a record number of entries this year” a week later, even though they couldn’t advertise the contest as broadly as they had in the past.<\/p>\n That means more funding for conservation education and more contestants exposed to ethical contest rules\u00a0and I couldn’t be happier about that. Credit certainly doesn’t go to me (I didn’t enter), it rightfully goes to my blog followers and by extension to some of\u00a0those who follow\u00a0you on social media.<\/p>\n If\u00a0Nancy thinks you probably\u00a0made a difference, and she does, then so do I. Only a few dozen of my\u00a0viewers regularly comment on my blog which is\u00a0seen almost 900 times daily (some of those views are repeat views by the same person) so we’ll never know how many entries directly resulted from your efforts but whatever the number it seems to have made a\u00a0significant and positive difference.<\/p>\n So please take a well deserved collective bow. And if you didn’t enter this year there’s always next year. It’s all for a great cause and the prizes for winning are quite generous, especially for a relatively small contest.<\/p>\n So if you have the inclination\u00a0snap away between now and then and don’t forget to enter next year.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n PS – As subscribers to my blog no doubt noticed I had another brain fart last night and hit the “publish” button on my editing screen when I was only beginning to work on this post. That meant that the\u00a0emails with the link\u00a0to the post went out to subscribers prematurely so I had to change the post setting\u00a0to “private” so the link didn’t work if you tried to open it. <\/em><\/p>\n\n
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