Wow, one goes on vacation and life gets exciting
George and others,
Wow, one goes on vacation and life gets exciting on MDOsprey. I'm sorry it's taken so long to respond to the posters about their concerns with the Atlas Photography Contest rules. Other issues that came up in the related threads are thought provoking (payment for photographs, a book vs. CD, etc.) - but are outside the issues regarding the contest rules and won't be addressed.
First, the rules of the contest were carefully researched and thought out before we announced the contest at the MOS Convention in August. Members of the Atlas Committee and the MOS President saw them in July and gave me some helpful feedback. If they are unclear I take full responsibility for the one page handout distributed at the conference, included in the September Yellowthroat, and published on MDOsprey earlier this month. The goal is to have a fair contest with unbiased consideration given to all the pictures submitted.
Second, we on the Atlas Committee were very excited when Johns Hopkins University Press said that we could have a color picture of each breeding bird in this Atlas. As you know, in the past most Atlas species accounts have had at most a line drawing of the bird. However, the technology has now reached the point where we can have a color picture for the same cost as the line drawing or a black/white photo. In fact, we think the new MD/DC Breeding Bird Atlas will be among the first Atlases to have color photos of each included species. However, the Atlas is not a field guide - the data and its interpretation are the main focus of the book and will take up most of the space for each species - so one picture of the bird is all we have space for. The contest rules state that the "winners will be selected on the basis of originality, technical execution and their potential for helping readers gain an appreciation of the spirit of the bird." This means
the winning photo may be of a female, a bird at a nest, a fledgling - whatever says "Yep, that's an eastern phoebe." And each photographer has to choose one photo to depict that.
Third, the really big problem..............one species (one photo) per disk. We know this is burdensome especially for some photographers who may wish to submit large number of photographs. We understand that from the photographers' point of view, it would be much easier to put all the photo files on one disk. And we know requiring all these disks is environmentally questionable. But after much research and debate, this appears to be the best method for the committee members who have to organize the photos per species. We don't have a home computer that can upload and organize all these files at the same time. MOS is not a large conservation or educational organization with unlimited resources to run this contest. As we said above, we want to have an unbiased blind selection of the winning photographs. In actuality this is 209 small contests - yes, we hope to have a picture for each bird species in the Atlas.
So we will have a paper folder for each species. As each disk comes in it will be marked with a number or letter that corresponds to the same number or letter on the accompanying entry form. The judges will review the photos in each species folder, determine the winner, and then we will go to the entry form to see who the photographer is. Yes, we know it means there will be a lot of disks and a lot of work.........but we want to give everyone in the MD/DC birding community a chance to participate and this seemed to be the best way to do it given the limitations of our computers and time (we are all volunteers after all).
Some of the leading photographers have said they do not want to enter the contest under these rules. We hope they will change their minds. But one of the major concerns the committee has had is that their photographs could dominate the contest. These rules were developed to give everyone a fair chance. There are a lot of excellent photographers in MD & DC and we are sure we will have many quality photographs submitted. The contest deadline is January 31, 2008. That date was chosen because we realized that we may not receive photographs for some "hard to photograph" species and we may have to open the contest up for a further round for these species. Perhaps some of the photographers who did not want to enter the contest in the first round will decide to enter at that time with a far smaller number of species to cover.
Other items:
To clarify copyright/use issues: Each photographer retains the copyright to her/his photograph. They are only granting MOS and Johns Hopkins University Press the right to use their photograph in the publication and for promotional and marketing uses "directly related to the Atlas".
Birds must have been photographed in MD/DC: The handout omitted that birds could be photographed in DC. Sorry. And we are willing to accept photographs of birds taken in habitat that look like they were taken in MD or DC. Yes, it may be hard to determine what side of the Potomac the bird was on or whether it had just wandered into Delaware. Basically it means no Mockingbirds in Palmetto trees. And, in the event of a tie, the photograph of a bird taken in MD/DC will prevail.
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