"You Take Five" Photo Contest + Phoetica's supplemental offer

The following report at PhotographyBLOG features a new Digital Photography Contest sponsored by HP and Project Greenlight. It takes some effort to decipher the attached press release, so you will have to visit the official contest site www.hp.com/YOU after all. The contest is called “YOU Take Five!”, and it is a five digital photos you are supposed to take. Those photos should tell some story about anything you would like to share, and the submission deadline is March 31, 2004.

There will be five finalists selected by the panel of judges, and each of them will be from a different world region. You can win a cool prices, but do not get overly happy too soon. The Official Rules lists the countries which can participate, so chances are your country is not among them. If that’s the case, you can still be a winner - just post your “Five” right here at Phoetica!

But let’s go back to the official photo contest now. Top five finalists of “You Take Five!” will receive:

• An all-expense paid trip (airfare and hotel for two) to Hollywood for four nights and five days to attend the premiere of the Project Greenlight film. (Location of the premiere subject to change).
• An opportunity to walk down the red carpet with the stars.
• Invitation to a private cocktail party and the pre-screening of the film.
• A suite of HP digital photography products.

And the Grand Prizes for the absolute winner are even better:

• Airfare from anywhere in the world to the Project Greenlight film set.
  Walk-on role in the film.
• Free HP digital photography products to document your experience on the set.
• Personal tutorial from a professional set photographer.
• Your photos will be displayed at the premiere of the film.
• Your photos will be featured in an HP digital photography ad.

Regarding the photos itself, each of them can be up to 5MB (whoa!) big,
but you are not allowed to apply any modifications like brightness-adjustment, retouching, and even cropping is forbidden. Moreover, no violence, no obscenity, no nudity, etc. Better read the official rules beforehand.

The finalists will be selected from the following five regions:

(1) United States
(2) Canada
(3) Latin America
(4) EMEA (defined as England, France, Germany, Italy and Spain)
(5) Asia-Pacific (defined as Australia, Singapore, Thailand, Korea and Malaysia)

Phoetica Five

Out of luck? You are welcome to post your five photos here at Phoetica. Just upload your photo story to some photo sharing website (you can get some advice about how to do it in the articles category Online Photo Sharing), and then post link to your album in the comments section of this article. If you are lost, you can also send them by email ( webmaster@phoetica.com). But I beg you not to send me 5MB files!!! I can give you 1 MB for all five photos. The “no violence - no obscenity - no nudity” rule still apply.

Fine, but what about the prices?

Oh, you’ve caught me off guard. I am really not able to pay you a trip to Hollywood or give you a role in some movie, and I do not have red carpet you could walk on. So the prices for the winner, selected by the Phoetica Founder (me), are the following :

1) You will receive eternal glory by having your photos displayed at Phoetica
2) When we will have a chance to be in the same place at the same time, I’ll take you to the cinema on the film of your choice.
3) After that, we can go to have a cocktail. I do not drink alco, but I promise you will enjoy it anyway ;-)

Closing remarks

So far so good. Phoetica wish you complete success in the official “You Take Five” Photo Contest. If you can’t participate there, you are welcome to compete here in “Phoetica Five”. Just remember, the deadline is March 31, 2004. I hope to receive at least one entry, so I will not have to go to cinema alone. But even in this worst scenario, I will go to cinema anyway, on the film of my own choice. Isn’t life wonderful?