Guide Dogs for the Blind invites you to enter our Puparazzi Calendar Photo Contest! This is not your typical photography contest! We’re excited to be partnering with VotDo to offer an online, interactive voting platform that not only lets you be actively involved in your photo submission’s chance of winning a spot in GDB’s 2015 calendar, but helps raise funds for GDB’s mission as well.
Here’s how it works:
• There are five different categories for photo submissions:
1. Guide Dog Puppies (guide dog puppies wearing their current GDB puppy coats)
2. Working Guide Dogs (GDB guide dogs in harness)
3. GDB Breeder Dogs (ideally wearing their GDB breeder scarves)
4. GDB Career Change Dogs
5. Pet Pooches (any pet dogs of any breed – just great dog photos!)
• You can submit one digital photo to the contest according to the contest rules below. Our website will be open for submissions between Friday, May 23 through Thursday, June 5.
• Once your submission is approved, it will appear in an online voting gallery.
• Voting by donation begins on Friday, June 6 and closes on Friday, June 20. It costs $1 to vote, and there’s no limit on how many times people can vote. The voting proceeds are all tax-deductible donations to Guide Dogs for the Blind. All votes must be paid for online via the contest’s secure checkout system; you will receive a tax receipt by email when your transaction is complete.
• Once voting is live, you’ll want to spread the word about the contest to friends, family, coworkers and anyone you can think of and ask them to support your entry by voting for your dog’s picture. We will make it easy for you to get the word out, so when the contest begins you will able to link your entry in the voting gallery directly to your Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, email accounts and more. It’s up to you to spread the word, encourage people to vote by donation, and make sure your photo wins its category - all while supporting Guide Dogs for the Blind.
• The top vote getters (fundraising participants) in categories 1-4 will be featured in GDB’s 2015 wall calendar. The top vote getters in all categories will receive ten copies of the 2015 GDB calendar.
Contest Rules
• The Puparazzi Calendar Photo Contest is limited to one digital photo submission per person. Be sure to pick your best shot! Limiting the entries to one per person is to your advantage; multiple entries would divide your votes and make it harder for you to win.
• For the categories "Guide Dog Puppies" and "Working Guide Dogs," the dogs should be well branded in the photo (wearing current GDB puppy coats or harnesses). Photo captions must accompany all submissions, and include the name(s) of the dog(s) and any people in the image, and a brief description of the photo. DESCRIPTIVE CAPTIONING IS VERY IMPORTANT IN ORDER TO KEEP THE CONTEST AS ACCESSIBLE AS POSSIBLE. Example of a descriptive photo caption: Yellow Lab guide dog puppy Buffy posing in front of a field of colorful wildflowers.
• Contest participants are responsible for ensuring that they have the right to submit the photos being entered in the contest. By submitting to the contest, you affirm that you are the photographer or have been given unrestricted use permission by the photographer, to include the photo. If you choose to include people in your photo submission, you are responsible for obtaining the necessary permissions from the individuals depicted.
• All photographs should accurately reflect the subject matter and the scene as it appeared (no collages, please). Photos that have been digitally altered beyond standard optimization (removal of dust, reasonable adjustments to exposure, color and contrast, etc.) will not be considered for the contest. Multiple exposures that have been combined to produce a single "High Dynamic Range" image will not be considered for the contest.
• In order to be considered for inclusion in the GDB calendar, high-resolution digital files of the winning photos must be available to send to GDB at the close of the contest. (A high resolution file is 8 megapixels or larger – many cell phone photos will not qualify.) If for some reason the winning photos are not high-resolution digital files, GDB will work with the winner to highlight the photo in another GDB channel.
• This online contest is the sole platform for calendar photo submissions – be sure to enter, vote, and encourage others to vote for your best chance of success!
• Guide Dogs for the Blind reserves the right to utilize photo submissions in any manner deemed appropriate, beyond the scope of the 2015 calendar project.
GDB will also be promoting the contest, so be sure to stay tuned to the GDB Facebook page for highlights and updates. We hope that you will participate, and look forward to seeing all of the great submissions!
Click here to enter the Puparazzi Calendar Photo Contest:
http://welcome.guidedogs.com/puparazzi-contest
