Photo Contests
 

I'm going to do my best to express my Opinion(s) and try to not be offensive to anyone. I am a person who can rub some the wrong way because I am straight up with what I want to say and never mean anything offensive by it.

Number one: I haven't been here long and perhaps its due to a bit of inexperience, knowledge of the site, and how it works, that I get the impressions that I do!

Number two: I am not at all a fan of the Photo Contests held here for a multitude of reasons, which I attempted to generalize in a single post recently that did not appear to
pass the scrutiny of the admins! That itself is fine, if I am inappropriate at expressing myself, I don't mind my post being deleted, because I know myself too well!

Number 3: I never see any posts in the General Forum, about any Photo contests asking for participants, all I ever see are Opinion Posts to vote for the already ( somehow )
submitted entries. ( part of this was explained to me previously but I seem to have forgotton ) I too am busy and seem to forget things that are not top of my priority
list.

Number 4: The contestants are always the same ones, with the same cars, there are no particular categories! Its like Playboy having Playmate of the Month with the same 5
Ladies every month, but last time I checked, Playboy always had 12 different playmates every year, and One Playmate of the Year!

Number 5: Categories: ? Summer, Rain, Winter, Fall, HUH ? Suppossed to be about the cars, not the weather ! A few guys buy brand new cars, and keep them Cherry
all the time ! Thats great, I'm happy for them they can do that ! But what about everybody else? What about the Guys/gals who rebuild them?
What about engine remakes? what about body projects? Where are these contests?

Number 6: IMO the Photo Contests are lame and stale, but that is just my opinion, and according to the rules, I'm suppossed to be free to express my opinion.

Please assist me in understanding how the Photo contests work, and understand my "opinion" ! Thank You

I'm honestly surprised (and glad from a activity / participation standpoint) to see this forum does it at all. Unfortunately, the number of really active members is really low here, so I would think it would be difficult to get much variety, especially after years of running it.

So most of this post has to do with the photo contests. I'll share some background (I have been with the site since some time in 2010, I have owned my 2004 Monte since 2008). When I joined this site, there was still a lot of activity, people doing anything from modding, detailing and repairing of these cars. The staff of this site used to hold a monthly Monte Carlo of the Month contest (MOTM for short). MOTM was a huge thing, at a point in the month, a thread would start for people to nominate peers to be part of the MOTM voting (you could not nominate yourself). The 3 members who had the most support were the ones who got to be voted on and finally one MOTM was selected. You could only be MOTM once during the year (and if I recall, you would not be eligible for MOTM the following year, had to wait a year before you could be MOTM again).
The last Chevy Monte Carlo rolled off the assembly line in 2007. There was no "new" and "upcoming" Monte Carlo to keep breathing breath into the support for the platform. As a result, many of the enthusiasts moved away from the Monte Carlo. These cars have begun to fall into the price point to be someone's first car and in many cases, first learning for car repair, so we have seen a lot of younger people come here to seek advice. Our activity has also decreased due to the changes in Internet culture. Forums like this are not as mobile/cell phone friendly as some other forms of social media.
MOTM began falling to the problems you listed. God bless Barbara. She was one of our moderators and was a huge help. As much as she could, until cancer took her from us, she tried to breath new life to MOTM. Unfortunately, I believe MOTM ended just before she did.

MOTM was the ONLY staff operated photo contest on this site.

The current photo contests I believe are ran by Dean aka DriverNumber3. Any member is permitted to run a photo contest if they wish. I believe all Dean is attempting to do is put a theme to the contest (encourage people to take their Monte out and get fresh pictures instead of re-circulating old pics). As for how the photos are chosen for what Dean is running, it may be best to have him discuss that topic. If you wish to hold contests or ask for pics of a specific topic, by all means, go for it. I enjoy looking at progress pics to projects (I peak in on your progress with your current Monte and think things like that are great to see). When running a contest, the person who starts the thread can select options to add a voting poll. When doing so, they specify the time to vote as and what the options are when setting those up. Once the time is up, the voting is no longer available (only the graph of the final results).

I hope this provides some insight and history to help understand some of what has happened here over the years.

Id like to say I really enjoy seeing the photo contests.. One day when my car is presentable im gonna start posting pics but right now its far from acceptable.. New paint job should be coming within the next few months so maybe sooner than later....

Thanks for the explanations thus far, yes it does help me understand several things, including the suggestion that anyone can hold a contest. I was under the impression, that it was the site administrators that held the contests ! I'm going to wait for a few more replies to see how others might feel, and probably institute a few contests myself to aid the site in some variety!

Hopefully this will help some!
 

Sorry for the Delay on this response I am still kind of recovering from a fall of a ladder I took, and sometimes just do a word doc. hurts some.

What you wrote: in Black my response is in Red or other color.
I'm going to do my best to express my Opinion(s) and try to not be offensive to anyone. I am a person who can rub some the wrong way because I am straight up with what I want to say and never mean anything offensive by it.

Yeah, Me too!



Number one: I haven't been here long and perhaps its due to a bit of inexperience, knowledge of the site, and how it works, that I get the impressions that I do!

Number two: I am not at all a fan of the Photo Contests held here for a multitude of reasons, which I attempted to generalize in a single post recently that did not appear to
pass the scrutiny of the admins! That itself is fine, if I am inappropriate at expressing myself, I don't mind my post being deleted, because I know myself too well!

Most likely it wasn’t deleted sometimes they will disappear and you need to send out a search party to find it. Been there done that.

Number 3: I never see any posts in the General Forum, about any Photo contests asking for participants, all I ever see are Opinion Posts to vote for the already ( somehow )
submitted entries. ( part of this was explained to me previously but I seem to have forgotton ) I too am busy and seem to forget things that are not top of my priority
list.

Well to clear this up if you check the Off topic files shown in this forum you will find all the Photo contests. I try to select a theme for each month and then go for a post in the off topic area gives everyone a month to get stuff found and put the photo up. I have asked for more participants but it’s like a Dance, all the Girls are standing there just waiting to be asked out on the floor. All you have to do is embarrass yourself and ask them. Or in this case put a photo in that category.Everyone is busy, time management is the difficult thing. I had a bunch of classes on time management during my career from various companies I worked for.

Number 4: The contestants are always the same ones, with the same cars, there are no particular categories! Its like Playboy having Playmate of the Month with the same 5
Ladies every month, but last time I checked, Playboy always had 12 different playmates every year, and One Playmate of the Year!

The contestants are not selected they choose to participate and select a photo and put it out there, all by themselves, if we only have 3 or 5 it’s because thats all that entered.

Number 5: Categories: ? Summer, Rain, Winter, Fall, HUH ? Supposed to be about the cars, not the weather ! A few guys buy brand new cars, and keep them Cherry
all the time ! That’s great, I'm happy for them they can do that ! But what about everybody else? What about the Guys/gals who rebuild them?
What about engine remakes? what about body projects? Where are these contests?

Those are the themes that were chosen in the past several years to run during the months that we unfortunate few that live in the Northern part of the Country have to deal with. You pull a photo out of the file that could have been taken years ago and submit it. We all have hated this year’s Winter. So a Summer theme is all about your Monte Carlo out in the Sunshine if you got a shot of it, use it.

Photo’s are actually (ART) if you take a shot of the engine bay or something with the heads off and the manifold setting on a fender cover, you should link it to some kind of composition. Compostion is what appears in the photo to make it interesting to view. Sometimes when the fellows and I go out to take a photo of the Car we enjoy. We may take several days to get the shot we want, the sky needs to be clear, sun out, Blue sky is good. Then it’s better to take a shot by a lake or a tree, than near a trash dumpster or a Yugo! The Car that is your subject should be clean and if you take the shot at an angle it gives it depth and perspective. This is the difference between a Photograph and a Snapshot.

The folks you see entering the contest have great pride in the Monte Carlo they shoot a photo of. They also have attitude. The attitude they demonstrate is that they wouldn’t enter the contest unless they expected to win.

Number 6: IMO the Photo Contests are lame and stale, but that is just my opinion, and according to the rules, I'm supposed to be free to express my opinion.

I enjoy everyone’s opinion that’s what makes the world go around. My wife would agree with you on the Lame. But she takes horrible photographs, she usually takes only one and then if it doesn’t turn out she will just go oh well didn’t need it anyway.


Please assist me in understanding how the Photo contests work, and understand my "opinion" ! Thank You

But let me explain some other features of this issue. The Lame photo contest is an activity that most folks can use to show off their vehicle. I think the Forum is about participation. Some of the fellows who came up with the Forum idea back in 05/06 have thousands of posts and replies. That’s called participation if you don’t participate you will lose it as it may have prohibitive costs, I think it relies on sponsors to keep it going. That’s why we see those adds on here. Some of us enjoy reading about your car and showing off the car in photo’s or car shows.

I sometimes am annoyed by all the inane questions about what can I do about this? Or my car won’t start. Or I installed a brand new Stereo system that you can hear 5 blocks away from where I am sitting, but now my car won’t start? Or I can’t keep brakes in my car why does this happen. My first thought is you just shot from the hip or you can’t drive? The moral here is don’t F***** with the car unless you do the proper research first. Buy your parts at NAPA or Rock Auto, not amazon.

My son was a good one for this, a few years back he purchased a used Ford pickup. Then after he got it he asked me If I would tune it up for Him? I said let me check it out. Well they didn’t make the thing like normal. The Spark plugs were in the top of the Heads thru the valve covers. Youtube vids said it was a terrible design and you break off the Plugs. That debris get in the engine and you have a truck you can’t use. (just an example)

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This contest idea was the brainchild of ZIPPY02 (Gregg H) a Monte owner from Utah. He provided the guidance and also had some fantastic shots of his car.
Used to be the winner of the contest would pick the next theme. But as time progressed guys couldn’t think of something to do so then it was a random thing from ideas that folks posted in the ideas for the contest.

ZIPPY02 BECAME OUR FIRST CONTEST WINNER, the theme was hot summer nights. I think he got the second one as well. The third was called May Flowers which I was the winner of.

At that time the winner chose the next contest theme, and we had sometimes as many as 10 entries. We also had 2 Contests per month.

Then as he got more busy we had a Lady Admin. Moderator on here, her name was Barb. So Barb would set it up and pick the theme for the contest. She passed away a few years back, she was a good friend and I got to meet her in Kentucky during a Monte Carlo show. She was good! After that I kind of tried to resurrect the idea in her memory, and been doing it for a few years now.

Barb was a racer too! The winning-est racers have an attitude you can tell when you meet them if they have it or not. Some are Racers and some are participants, who usually get in the way and cause everyone else to wreck. Years ago when I used to race I went to each track expecting to win, that was just the attitude I had, sometimes I did and sometimes not!

So when you see the entrants in this contest provide a photo of their Monte Carlo they expect to win! But they also prepare a lot for the shot. They like me might take as many as 15 to 20 shots. It’s cheap now cause you don’t have any developing fees, discard the ones that didn’t turn out. Sometimes I am stunned by the concept they came up with! They are very cool and off the scale! Makes me want to strive even more to come up with better ideas.
So now you’re going to say this dude is nuts! But that is what it might take to get into the right frame of mind to take photo’s.

This is a lot like the reality shows when people flip a house, to sell it they Stage the house with furnishings to help it sell. Similarly with Car shops will take a bunch of Cars to a show and create a theme in the booth to make it more aesthetic. So then I see people try to sell stuff online and they never wash the car or clean up the stuff they are selling. If I have to buy the dirt, I will take that off the price I plan to offer them!
:ttiwwp:

So what I think might be a good idea is to have a snapshot contest for those folks who just take a snapshot. Turn up the resolution on the thing you use to take pictures. Always take a horizontal shot wide angle lens. If you use the phone to take it they work too! But I see folks all the time with a vertical shot, you miss the detail doing that. Put it into the computer so you can see it and then crop it out.

Most of my background is in Engineering design and construction. So I have had a lot of education about presentation. It’s difficult to sell a project without seeing what it would look like. It was old school stuff when I drew a rendering from scratch to show the customer what the project looked like. I think there are a few folks on here that have similar talents some have the advantage of a computer to be more creative. I am retired now so I don’t have to worry to much about it. I focus on getting the Monte ready for a Car show or 2.

Now if you look at the Forum site there is the :welcome: :flag:

General Forum Section

The Your Ride section

Racing and Recreational

Monte Carlo Enthusiast clubs

Classified sections
https://cimg9.ibsrv.net/gimg/monteca...391b5b57da.jpg
A few areas you might want to check out!


The section about your ride is a place to post your interior and engine build stuff.

I redid the interior in my Monte and put it all in there.

The contest is usually run in the Off Topic section and the voting in the General Monte Carlo talk section, gets more activity! We use to be all in the Off topic section.


One last thing about the Voting I never vote for my own photo, I liked it enough to put it out there it’s up to me to see if the rest of the guys like it. I believe they feel the same way as I do. I have change the voting to make it a multi-choice thing. You can vote for 2 of your favorites.