Strobist Photos of the Year Contest: Call for Sponsors

UPDATE (12/07/07): To the contest's prospective sponsors: THANK YOU!

We have an embarrassment of riches of sort, with an oversubscription of offers. I have narrowed it down to five, and there are going to be many drooling photographers when prizes are announced next week. I will be contacting you shortly as to whether your offered prizes will be included.

Two things to remember: We will have opportunities to do this again, and those of you who do not end up sponsoring SPOY, will be glad they were able to enter it!

Thanks much,
David
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Over the last few weeks, I have had a series of emails from businesspeople who are interested in raising their company's visibility among our readership and have proposed the idea of contributing prizes for promotional events.

Sounds like reason enough to have a party to me. (As if we ever need a good reason.) So I am officially shaking the trees to see who else among our photo-business-oriented readers might be interested in a one-time promotional event.

More details available, and some preliminary details on the contest, after the jump.
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How it Would Tentatively Work: Sponsors

1. You would submit a comment on this post, with the prize your company is willing to offer, and your email contact info. (Your info would not be published, of course.)

2. Of the prizes offered I would choose five, based on appropriateness to our readership, retail value and coolness/creativity. Please bear in mind that people shoot with different brands of cameras. So, for example, a lens from a certain camera brand might be a little clunky if the winner shoots on another platform. (But a Canon G9, or Nikon P5100 would be a very useful, Strobist-friendly, stand-alone prize for any photographer, regardless of brand.)

3. Those five sponsors would get visibility in the following ways:

A) On the day in which the prizes are announced, with your URL being linked in the body of the post. This would reach both site readers and RSS subscribers.

B) On the day in which your sponsored winner is chosen, within the body of the post, similarly linked, and with similar exposure.

C) A one-week run as a 200px x 100px sidebar ad in early 2008. (At current readership, this one week would result in approximately 375,000 pageviews.

Total, during this time frame, your company's info and link would be seen about 450k - 500k times by a total of about 65,000 "absolute unique" photographers. (This is based on current individual-day -- and one-week -- statistics.)

And, of course, you'd get all of that good Karma from being the giver of a cool prize. Which is always nice.

For the purposes of distributing the prize, you would be responsible for shipping your prize to the winner, who could be located just about anywhere in the world. I would hook you up with your winner via email. Customs duties and taxes, if any, would be the responsibility of the winner.



How it Would Tentatively Work: Entrants and Judging

Assuming we get sufficent interest on the prize front, the winners would be chosen from among the photos in the Flickr Strobist Pool. I look at every single photo that comes through. Obviously, photos already in the Faves Pool already have a leg up. But I am sure that I have missed some really hot shots along the way. So if we go forward I will have a way devised for you to make sure your extra-special precious babies get a second look.

The pros and amateurs would be competing right along side each other. Do not be daunted by that, amateurs -- I find it pretty much impossible to tell the difference these days.

I would choose ten finalists and forward their URL's to a special celebrity judge who has already graciously agreed to choose the final five, in order. Heck, if I did all of the judging, it might end up being like choosing Dick Cheney to head the Committee on Who Would Make the Best Vice President. And we all saw how THAT turned out.

Of course, employees of Strobist.com and their families would, regretfully, not be eligible to enter. Ditto, sponsors. The winners of each of the five prizes would be announced on, respectively, the last five days of the year, Dec 27th - Dec 31st, 2007.


And read this part very carefully:

There would be no transfer of rights by the photographer to anyone.

As is the case with the Flickr Strobist Group TOS, your picture would, of course, appear on the main blog, though. But that "we own all of the entries" crap doesn't play here.

Mind you, this is all tentative based on who comes up with what prizes. So, potential sponsors, the ball is in your court.