Experience The Mountain Parks Blog

2010 Photos/Videos Early Bird Contest Winner Announced!

On behalf of our staff and all of the sponsors of our 2010 Reader Photo Contest, we are very pleased to announce that the winner of our Early Bird Prize Package is Darren Robinson of Powell River, British Columbia.

Darren’s entry, entitled 'Through the eyes of the mountain guide' is listed as image #131 (as of today) on this page of our web site:
Keep in mind we'll be uploading more than an extra 50 more submissions made August 1^st to August 12^th only, and the general contest will be closing next year, end of March 2011!! 

Our Early Bird Prize Package has a retail value of $1,635 and includes:

• Two nights Bed & Breakfast Package in a Fairmont room for two adults with complimentary recreation equipment rentals valid through to March 31, 2011, courtesy of the Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Resort Hotel. Surf up their site at www.fairmont.com. The Fairmont is a very well known and respected brand in the Canadian Rockies and includes such other properties as the Château Lake Louise and the Banff Springs hotels. The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge Resort is a pet-friendly family hotel and it was named the 2009 Environmental Hotel of the Year based upon their commitment to hotel-wide composting, waste diversion, and a constant commitment to all things green. And a $6 million dollar renovation, just winding up will feature a new 10,000 square foot full Fairmont Spa, new health club, art gallery, a selection of boutique stores, and a redesigned coffee shop. 
  
  
• In addition to these superior accommodations, Darren will also receive a Columbia Icefields Parkway Motorcycle Tour plus commemorative tee shirts for two people courtesy of Jasper Motorcycle Tours. Check out all of their tour packages at www.jaspermotorcycletours.com.
  
  
• Evil Dave’s Grill (www.evildavesgrill.com) will provide Darren with a $50 Gift Certificate for their dining pleasure and the "Everything But" store has donated a $50 Gift Certificate with which Darren will be able to purchase clothing or souvenirs of this memorable experience.  And Darren is sure to enjoy an autographed copy of “Jasper-Robson: A Taste of Heaven”, written by Don Beers and courtesy of Pine Bungalows. 

And a gentle reminder to continue to submit your photo entries. Our Photo Contest runs straight through til March 31, 2011, and we still have some superb prizes to give away, including:

• Gold Medal Package: A brand new Canon EOS Digital Rebel T2i EF-S High Definition video camera and accessories with a retail value of $1,800, courtesy of The Camera Store in Calgary. The Camera Store opened in 1996 to better serve the western Canadian market. They are full line dealers for the entire range of conventional and digital photographic equipment and supplies and they have the knowledge base to back it up!  They can make your photographic experiences easier and help improve your final product. Most commercial photographers, photo students and avid amateurs in Calgary rely on The Camera Store for all their needs.
  
  
• Silver Medal Package: A portable outdoor campfire and accessories. Ideal for campers.  Easy & safe to use. Courtesy of Campfire-in-a-Can. Their portable campfires are designed with you, the outdoor enthusiast and RV owner in mind. From backyard to the beach and beyond, their environmentally friendly, easy to use and safe outdoor fire pits give you a warm, welcoming campfire experience anytime, anywhere. It's the premium-quality portable campfire you can count on - from their family to yours.
  
  
• Bronze Medal Package: A large print of the Crowsnest Pass image that appears on page 14 of the 2010-2011 edition of Experience the Mountain Parks. Plus two “Share the Experience” tee shirts. The print is courtesy of the Ministry of Culture and Community Spirit, Heritage & Museum Division, Government of Alberta and the tees are courtesy of CMI Publishing. 

Congratulations to Darren and many thanks to our sponsors and to all those who entered our 2010 Photo Contest, so far. Remember, you have until March 31^st to get your entries in to be eligible for our Gold, Silver and Bronze prize packages!

Happy trails!
 
Bob Harris
Publisher of Experience the Mountain Parks
Tweet me at http://twitter.com/BHarris_Calgary

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Early Bird 2010 Photos/Videos Contest Winner to be announced in the next hours!

Judges have decided on the early bird winning photo entry...The winner will be announced today! Stay tuned!

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2010 Photo/Video Contest Early Bird, all submissions are in!

Thank you for your awesome participation but moreover for your patience!

So unless there have been a few submissions "falling through the cracks", I mean submitted directly to The Camera Store or by mail to CMI Publishing, our early bird count stopped at 621 612 photos, and 4 videos submitted, yes I said 621 612!
(Honestly we're still sorting out some submissions that couldn't get through the last three days. So the final count should be around this announced number.)

As a matter of comparison there were (only) 115 submissions in all of 2009. Almost a five-fold in a matter of a few weeks!

That means a few things to us;

You are more and more to come to this website, come back on a regular basis, so like it. So please before going, leave us a comment. This is your website, help us make it better.

From all over the world, you came to visit us as you trust this website, and you like it. Furthermore, we've seen an amount of professional work mixed with family photos submitted to Experience The Mountain Parks second-to-none. Interestingly enough it means we attract professional photographers or not alike!

Your participation to this contest went mainly through our website. As we didn't expect such a participation, some of you had difficulties submitting their artwork. Our server went over capacity a few times and we apologize for the inconvenience it caused to some. As an aside we'll publish the contestants full list pretty soon.

So you might wonder, with such an amount of contestants, what are my chances of winning?

Well this contest is far from being over; there will be more monthly opportunities to win amazing prizes. Don't forget your submissions up to March 2011 will be entered for the gold, silver, and bronze packages.

But this isn't what's important to us and we hope for you too. What we like the most (like you) is to see your stories and experiences shared here.
So, you'd like to go further on, but where to go from there?
Let us know, share your experiences, stories, through your photos, videos, drawings, or send us your written stories. We'll publish them. We'd love this, and we're sure you'd like to read the stories from others.

Some of you might wonder as well where is this (feature) or that? We promised a lot, and trust us, we'll deliver!
It says in the Wisdom of Confucius:
"It does not matter how slow you go so long as you do not stop."

Last but not least, some of you still didn't provide any captions for their photos. You need to provide them to be considered for the contest!!

Good luck all!

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2010 Photo/Video Contest Early Bird Submission

Here we go, the early bird contest just closed its doors an hour and a half ago, at midnight mountain time, but it's not over...these entries, along with your future ones will be competing for the gold, silver and bronze prizes!! 

This general contest closes March 31, 2011, midnight M.T.!

 - The Gold Prize package is valued at $1800 retail value: a full camera outfit from
The Camera Store, Calgary.

- The  Silver Prize package is a portable outdoor campfire & accessories from
Campfire-in-a-can.

- The  Bronze Prize package includes a beautiful print of the Crowsnest Pass and
two Experience The Mountain Parks tee-shirts.

Lastly, there will be more opportunities to win, through monthly chances, up to the end of March 2011, More exciting prizes are coming. Just follow Bob on Twitter to know more. Almost 5500 are following him already.

  
So, what's the competition like in the early bird contest? We're still in the process of wrapping up, and uploading your submissions. However we can tell you there are between 550 and 600 photos submissions, along with 4 videos.

Some of you sent us corrections/additions to their photos captions. We'll work on these in the next hours. All photos we received before yesterday, 1 hour and a half ago, are safe. We'll be publishing as a separate list the names of the early bird contestants.

Important note:
Some submissions have been sent with no captions, no indications of where it was shot. We're displaying these photos for your enjoyment, but they won't have a chance to participate, unless we do receive these captions in the next 24 hours. A simple text file is enough.

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