Return of the "Wowies!"

Last year, I held a camera phone photo contest which was lovingly dubbed by some Twitter friends as "The Wowies." I received a number of great entries and thought the contest was successful enough to try it again this year. Because I'm lazy, and because it seemed to work smoothly, I'm keeping the same rules as last year. The only change is that the contest is now open to everyone, no matter where you live in the world! Here's the scoop:

Horsephotos.com puts out a racing calendar every year, and as I am one of their photographers, I get a complimentary calendar for my contributions. Since I get extra calendars, I thought it would only be appropriate to give one away as a thank-you to my followers on social media. (My mom got the other free calendar, or I'd give away more than one. Sorry.)


To put things on a level playing field, I decided to make the subject matter limited not just to racing, but to all animals. (I wasn't able to journey to my first horse racing track until I was a senior in high school, after all--how would 17-year-old me feel?) Even though technically, humans are animals, please no people shots.

THE RULES (YOU SHOULD PROBABLY READ THESE):

1.) Photo must be taken with a camera phone. Please be honest about this and DON'T CHEAT. I will more than likely be able to tell if you are fibbing and I will throw out your entry if I suspect you're trying to pull one over on me.

2.) Photo must be of an animal. It doesn't matter who owns the animal, just as long as I don't get any pictures of your Uncle Ted sleeping after Thanksgiving or something. Pictures of people will be tossed. This probably goes without saying, but if you send me any pictures of animal abuse, I will call the police on your ass and additionally, not be very nice.

3.) Pictures must be submitted in high-resolution. A tiny cropped photo is simply hard to see and probably means you're trying to hide the fact it's of poor quality. 

4.) Pictures may be edited using Instagram, etc. But, in all honesty, the less Photoshopped the picture is, the better chance it has of winning. I'm not crazy about excessive use of photo editing. So don't send me a picture of Rachel and Zenyatta in a match race, cuz that didn't happen.

5.) You must be following me on Twitter or be a fan of my photography on Facebook. (I don't know how you would find out about this contest if you aren't already doing one of these, anyway...)

6.) Only one entry per person. Make it count!

7.) Entries must be sent to me at wowhorse@gmail.com by midnight Central Time on January 11, 2013. Please include your first and last name in your email and put PHOTO CALENDAR CONTEST in the subject of the email.

8.) Contest is open to everyone this year! I don't care who you are, where you're from... wait, this is starting to sound like a Backstreet Boys song... 

Pictures inside this 12-month calendar include Frankel, Monterosso, I'll Have Another/Bodemeister, Union Rags/Paynter, Dullahan, Alpha/Golden Ticket, Little Mike, My Miss Aurelia/Questing, and Flat Out.

I'll post the winning photo here on my blog. Good luck to all the entrants! May the Horse be with You!