Images by John 'K'
Life as seen through my lens…
Tag Archives: facebook
Third time’s a charm
Posted by on March 19, 2014
About 6 months ago, a professional photographer and good friend of mine convinced me to enter some of my Yosemite Park photographs into a competition to chose the cover photo for the Yosemite / DNC Facebook page. For those that don’t know, DNC (Delaware North Companies) own and manage almost all of the commercially run lodging options in Yosemite National Park, and their page is fairly popular, with over 76,000 ‘likes’.
The page runs a quarterly contest to chose a seasonally themed photograph to be their cover photo for 3 months. The photographer who wins gets nothing other than bragging rights and a prominent name mention on their site, but it’s a hotly contested prize. The rules follow those of many such contests on Facebook, whereby you need to win the public vote to be in the top xx entries (in this case top 5) and then a panel of judges picks from the most popular.
My first attempt 6 months ago was for last year’s Fall banner. I ended up with 2 images in the top 5 (I entered 10), and had the popular vote, but another entrant won the judges vote. My second try was for their Winter banner. I entered 5 pieces, and again I got the popular vote, but again another entry was chosen. After two failed attempts to win over the judges with my work I almost stopped there, but something told me to have one last go for their Spring banner when they announced the contest a couple of weeks ago.
I don’t have a lot of Spring pictures of Yosemite, but I picked one that I thought would work nicely as a cover page image, and submitted that one piece. I shot out a couple of early requests to my ‘friends’ on Facebook to vote for me, but then largely left things alone (whereas before I was almost nagging folks to vote!). The last two days of open voting I wasn’t even able to see how things were going, as I was in the park with no real internet access, so it was a pleasant surprise to see my picture again had the popular vote when I got back home late on Sunday.
Then began the short wait to see what the judges would do, and this time I won, so for the next three months, if you visit the Yosemite page on Facebook, you’ll see my picture and my name up there on the top of the page.
Needless to say I have a huge smile on my face today, and I’ll be taking full advantage of the prize… namely bragging rights! 
Sometimes we focus on the wrong things…
Posted by on February 28, 2011
I’m on Facebook. I’m there so I can more easily keep in touch with my family who are spread around the globe, and more recently I’ve started to share some of my photography there, but I’ve added a collection of friends and acquaintances as “friends” too.
In watching their updates, I often wonder what it is that makes people want to share their every thought and action on a site such as Facebook, where pretty much everyone can read what you put out there.
Without naming names, here are a few examples of the stuff I see…
“Experimenting with my big top cupcake again today…there is nutella involved.”
“Just discovered his X-box 360 has a free version of Pandora on it! OMG, I can do chores now!!!”
“Felt like tbe biggest asshole filling up my SUV”
“: ]”
“suppose I should get on with this ironing!”
“just seen Captain Glamtastic is at the club in October – will he… won’t he….??????”
“Seattle. Spa time.”
“bad dream :(“
“your phone being off doesn’t make it as special dude”
These are just from the past few hours…. and this is without all of the game updates (which I block the moment I see a new one).
Are people really that bored that they can find nothing else to do than post this cr*p to the world? For Pete’s sake people, get a hold of yourselves. Get outside and see what the real world is like. Go take a walk or a hike or a bike-ride. Go and check in on an old neighbor and make sure they are OK. At the very least, if you’re going to post cr*p, at least make sure you’ve spelled it correctly!
Oh… and use some common sense in what you post too. Don’t post personal details (phone number, address, stuff like that) and then go telling everyone that you’ll be away from home for the next 2 weeks on vacation. That’s just an open-house invite for all the low-lifes near you!
Also, do people realize that a search of someone’s profile on Facebook is becoming one of the standard things that potential employers do before they will consider looking at a job applicant?
Facebook is a great tool if used correctly, but so many people are blind to how it can be used against you, and it’s all because they focus on the wrong things…
Images by John 'K' 