Snapping for SWAG

Over the years I’ve had the pleasure of working with many local photographers, some good, some adequate, none bad.  Because of my experiences our intern Paddy has been bugging me to take up snapping myself. “It’s not like you’ve never worked behind a camera,” he said. “Why not give it a go?”

To emphasize his point Paddy brought the latest Lenzr.com online photo contest to my attention. “It’s simple,” he explained. “Charge up the digital and go out and take snaps of some of your fave tourist attractions. The city’s full of ‘em and how hard could it be. You don’t have to slap makeup onto a building. It’s a contest but you wouldn’t be competing against the likes of Steven Meisel, just other local snappers. And you could win stuff.”

The contest is very easy to enter; contestants upload their original photos to the Lenzr.com Ontario Tourist Attractions Photo Contest page then compose a brief text caption for each shot. Lenzr’s upload mechanism ties the captions to the photos so the process is a no-brainer. Visitors to the Lenzr site then vote on their fave photos and at the end of the contest she or he with the most votes wins. Democratic art critiquing.

Web savvy registered users can use the link in their profile page to bring traffic back to their own website gallery. Members can also take the initiative and hustle votes for their great pics.

Yeah, I could win stuff. Lenzr.com, a local initiative, has already run three photo contests and given away an Esquire Verve watch, an iPhone 3Gs, and a Pentax Optio P90 camera. I could’ve used the Pentax myself. This time the prizes are American Express gift certificates: one valued at $200 for first prize, another valued at $100 for second.

Somebody has to pony up for the swag and this contest is sponsored by Kanetix.ca, an online insurance shopping tool that helps Canadians shop for insurance and mortgage rates by offering free, real-time quotes. Buying a new ride or some new digs? Well, you’ve got to buy the paper and these guys can make it a little cheaper.

Research: Paddy O’Conure

Tags: Steven Meisel

This entry was posted on Monday, September 28th, 2009 at 12:52 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.