We’re thrilled. 2013 was a landmark year for us. We opened our new office at Crocker, threw a pretty swanky party, got attacked by a deer, ran from the cops, broke a LOT of equipment, got trapped in an elevator, kidnapped a pony, took a crap-ton of pictures, edited a crap-ton of pictures, and found some time in between to make brides, grooms, families and our commercial partners super fabulous looking. All in all, 54,513 images were crafted, and we’re thrilled for what 2014 will bring.
Sometimes the best way of moving forward is by looking back and remembering. Therefore, we proudly announce our annual “Image of the Year Competition” for images that were crafted last year (2013). This year the competition will be fierce, with over a million thousand dollars worth of prizes for our clients!
Be it a Wedding, Engagement Session, Creative Family Session, LiveBooth, Commercial Shoot or otherwise, we nominated one image from each eligible photo-shoot to be an entry in this year’s competition.
Image of the Year Grand Prize
Valued at over $1000 bucks, this is worth fighting for *
- 24×36″ Metal Wall Art Print with B.A. (bad-ass) Metal Stud Post Hangers. Yes – complete awesomeness.
- $250 gift card to the Making the Moment Photography print lab
- Our team will toilet paper the person’s house of your choice **
Image of the Year Runner-Up
Pretty good stuff still happens here for our second place winner
- $187.15 gift card to the Making the Moment Photography print lab
- Limited edition signed/numbered photograph of Brett drinking a wee bit much at this year’s openhouse
- A high five from our staff ***
Image of the Year Almost Winner (3rd Place)
Amazing awesomeness still happens here for our third place winner
- $50 gift card to the Making the Moment Photography print lab
- Limited edition signed photograph from someone else’s wedding
- Luke will give a strangely long awkward hug to the person of your choice
When Does This Thing Happen?
Starting Monday Morning, the 133 images eligible for this years Image of the Year Competition will be placed on on a blog entry on our website. Voting begins immediately on that blog post.
How Do We Vote for Our Favorite Image?
Contestants, friends, family (enemies too we suppose) are able to vote by simply “liking” the image (or images) they enjoy most on that blog post. There is a Facebook “like” button underneath each of our 133 images on this page – just click it while being logged into Facebook and you have voted.
Who is Eligible to Vote?
Only people who “like” Making the Moment Photography on Facebook are eligible. Don’t worry, we’ll have a button to register right next to the vote button for each image. Pretty nifty huh?
Round Two Voting
After the first round of voting, 20 “Finalist” images will be chosen based on popular voting from round one. The vote count for these 20 images will start with an even playing field (all votes reset to zero). It is important to know that the images will be displayed in the order of popularity via votes from the first round though. Round two voting will have some extra “bonus” points available to switch things up a bit. Keep posted on how this will affect the competition.
When Does Voting End?
Voting for round one ends at exactly 9:00 EST Tuesday January 28. At that point, we will count votes for the images posted, and narrow down to the 20 Image of the Year finalists.
OK, So When Does Voting for Round 2 End?
Round Two voting starts Wednesday January 29, as soon as the 20 finalists images are posted on our blog. This should be somewhere around noon, but we might sleep in. We shall see. The Second round ends on Thursday January 30 at 9:00 PM EST.
When Will Winners be Announced?
On or before Friday January 31, we will announce the top three Images of the year!
How Can I Get Lots o’ Votes?
Simple; tell your friends. Tell everyone! The more likes, the better chances you have of your image winning the competition!
Miscellaneous Official Rule List
Participants in this years competition have the following rules to abide by. Please give them a brief read. We also have tips scattered throughout on how you can bribe our judges.****
- “Likes” underneath each individual photo in the “2013 Image of the Year” blog post on Making the Moment’s website count as a vote, but only by official fans of Making the Moment Photogrpahy on Facebook
- Please remember – sharing an image on your wall does not work – Facebook does NOT link the likes / comments to our official page. Only votes cast on our page will actually be tallied.
- Votes by snail mail, email, phone, knocks on the door, inbox messages, prank calls, cookie delivery, and any other method besides facebook, do not count
- Bribing judges is permitted, but only by personally dropping off our favorite beers to the office
- Bribes will not however affect final outcome. They are still of course accepted and encouraged
- People may vote on as many photos as they’d like
- Generally speaking our favorite beers are Belgian or Trappist ales
- The commissioner of the image (ergo the actual “Client” of Making the Moment) is the actual prize winner, not necessarily the subject of the image
- All Awards/Prizes/Credits must be claimed within 30 Days of issuance, or are considered forfeited
- Award credits and prizes hold no actual cash value
- This time of year we also like porters and stouts
- Employees or contractors of Making the Moment LLC are not permitted to vote or “like” any images in the contest. Comments are permitted though, but will not count towards the vote totals.
- Winners will be announced on our facebook page the day after after everything has been officially tallied
- Eligible contestants may use our images as facebook profile images, but are not permitted to crop the image in any way
- If the right beers are hard for you to find, we encourage you to just drop off hundred dollar bills
- No hundred dollar bills? That’s fine – just bourbon. Lots and lot’s of bourbon.
- Nominated images from the event are selected exclusively by Making the Moment Photography staff – all nominees are final
- Nominated peeps – please don’t complain about the image we chose and how awesome the other image that “shows your good side” better should be picked. We do our very best to pick images unbiasedly that we think really have a shot and stand out from the rest – it takes quite a bit of time for our staff to narrow it down to the best – so please trust us 🙂
- Final winners and vote tallies are up to the discretion of Making the Moment Photography
- At any time if the client who commissioned the image wishes the image to be removed from the contest, the image will be removed from the contest and no longer eligible for any prize winnings
- At any time if a subject of the image (or legal-guardian thereof) wishes the image they are being shown in to be removed from the contest, the image will be removed from the contest and the image and it’s respective client will no longer be eligible for any prize winnings
- Only fully purchased Images captured and released in 2013 are eligible for this contest (Photographic sessions ineligible for entry are sessions where digital files or home usage rights were not purchased)
- Users who wish to vote, but who are without a facebook account are still eligible for the contest by creating a free facebook account
Fairly Serious Legal Mumbo-Jumbo
- Comment votes containing profanity, violence, hate speech will be removed and not counted towards the vote tally to the given photograph
- Making the Moment Photography may at any time cancel the contest, alter or adjust the rules at any given time
- This contest is void where prohibited by law. The contestants assume the total responsibility of knowing their local laws in regard to contests and are subject to any local, state, national or international laws. Making the Moment LLC accepts no responsibility for making these individual legal determinations.
- Making the Moment LLC reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual it finds, in its sole discretion, to be tampering with the entry process or the operation of the Contest or the Website; to be in violation of the User Agreement of the Website; to be acting in violation of these Official Rules; to be acting in a unethical or disruptive manner, or with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person, as determined by Making the Moment LLC at its sole discretion.
- Any use of cartel, robotic, automatic, macro, programmed or like entry methods will void all such entries by such methods and persons using any such methods will be disqualified.
- If for any reason this Contest is not capable of being conducted as planned due to infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes which, in the sole opinion of Making the Moment LLC, corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity, or proper conduct of this Contest, Making the Moment LLC reserves the right to cancel, terminate, modify or suspend the Contest. If the Contest is terminated due to tampering or technical difficulties prior to its expiration date, notice will be posted on Making the Moment LLC’s website at http://www.MakingTheMoment.com/.
- As a condition of participating in this Contest, you agree that any and all disputes which cannot be resolved between the parties, claims and causes of action arising out of or connected with this Contest, or any prizes awarded, or the determination of the Winner shall be resolved individually, without resort to any form of class action exclusively by arbitration pursuant to the commercial arbitration rules of the American Arbitration Association, then effective. Further, in any such dispute, under no circumstances will you be permitted to obtain awards for, and you hereby waive all rights to claim punitive, incidental or consequential damages, or any other damages, including attorneys’ fees, other than your actual out-of- pocket expenses (i.e., costs associated with entering this Contest), and you further waive all rights to have damages multiplied or increased. All issues and questions concerning the construction, validity, interpretation and enforceability of these Official Rules, or your rights and obligations Making the Moment LLC’s rights and obligations in connection with this Contest, shall be governed by, and construed in accordance with, the laws of the State of Ohio, U.S.A. in the County of Cuyahoga, without giving effect to the conflict of laws rules thereof, and you agree to the jurisdiction and venue of the federal, state and local courts for Westlake, Ohio for any disputes relating to the Contest or these Official Rules.
* Do not hit, bite or otherwise hurt other contestants
** People never read the fine print. So sad. Actually, we will be toilet papering your house. Yes. Yours. Enjoy the gift card, the metal print, and picking up lots of toilet paper.
*** Wash your hands. At least one of us is a severe germophobe and we don’t want to get all pukey because you don’t wash your hands after you pee.
**** In all seriousness, you know we can’t be bought. The voting is completely up to facebook anwyays. Still – feel free to stop by with the above mentioned goodness.
