Webshots Blog

Photo walks, a popular activity among photo-sharing communities, let us all be a part of something no matter where we are in the world. By taking a walk this weekend and sharing the pictures with us, you’re contributing to a global mural of life.

So put on your walking shoes, grab your camera and go for a walk. You’ll be surprised at the photographic opportunities that present themselves. We’d love to see all of your photos as you can submit as many as you like!

Please tag your photos with Weekend Photo Walk 201 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

All summer, we’ve worked long and hard to bring you a fantastic new way to express your creativity, showcase your talent and bring your photos to life. We’ve given you hints, you’ve been guessing and we’re thrilled to finally reveal a brand new feature just for you!

Webshots Picture Shows takes your photos, words and choice of music and effortlessly blends them into a fantastic moving story. It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3!

1. Choose your Images: Select your album or tag to start your Picture Show. After deciding which photos to use, you have the option to rearrange them and add a title and captions (but only if you want to – you can let the music and imagery speak for you if you choose).

2. Choose your Music: Pick a song for our library (It’s easy to find a song perfect for your story!)

3. Finalize and Share!

In a matter of seconds you’ll be previewing a one of a kind masterpiece featuring your photos! Your Picture Shows are easy to share and send – you can share a link, email it, or post it to Facebook and Twitter. And best of all, you can try it free for a limited time!

We’re sure you’ll find dozens of reasons to make a Picture Show. It’s the perfect way to share the memories and relive the moments of your life. Vacations, family celebrations, milestone events, weddings, babies, or just a weekend get together; the list is endless!

Our Picture Shows are amazingly simple to make, beautifully produced and are sure to make a lasting impression. We know you’ll love it as much as we do!

The days are shorter, the air is crisp and the trees will be vibrant hues of gold and red.  If your trees aren’t already changing, don’t worry, because there are lots of colorful autumn subjects (like autumn displays) that also fit the theme. Many of you may even have photos of colorful trees from last year. Because the autumn creative challenge is one of the most popular creative challenges every year and to allow for Mother Nature to take her course, we will be extending the Changing Colors of Autumn challenge deadline one extra week. It will run between September 28-October 17th.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already done so, don’t forget to vote for your favorites on our Paws and Claws voting page. The winning photo will be announced Monday, October 3rd at noon!

NEW: To coincide with the current Creative Challenge: Changing Colors of Autumn, please enjoy this helpful article by professional photographer and special guest judge Kevin McNeal!

OFFICIAL ENTRY RULES
To officially enter the Changing Colors of Autumn Creative Challenge, you must tag your three submissions with creative-challenge-changing-colors. You can then view them and everyone else’s submissions on the DISPLAY PAGE (it updates about every hour). To find out more about this, read the Using Tags on Creative Challenges post.

Submission Guidelines
1. Our editors look for sharp, clear horizontal images that are at a minimum resolution of 800×600 (submissions can have larger resolutions than this). Currently, vertical images cannot fit in the homepage template. Therefore, we cannot publish vertical or narrow panoramic images.

2. Images with added text or images, including watermarks, logos, copyright symbols, graphic borders, frames and time stamps, will not be considered for first place or being featured on the homepage big photo of the day at a later date. Collages, however, are acceptable. Images submitted should be your own.

3. Please do not submit pictures that have already been featured on the homepage.

4. The Creative Challenge runs from 12:01 a.m. on September 28th through 12:00 p.m on October 17th (all times EST). 

5. 3 pictures per person (regardless of how many member accounts you have) tagged exactly (including hyphens) with: creative-challenge-changing-colors

*Note: Images that don’t meet the exact guidelines can be submitted and viewed for everyone to enjoy, but please understand that we cannot publish images that don’t meet minimum guidelines on the homepage.

NEXT CHALLENGE THEME: The Spirit of Halloween – Keep your eyes open for halloween subjects to photograph, this challenge will be a short one. It will run Wednesday October 19th through Thursday October 27th, but the winning photo will be featured on the Webshots homepage October 31st!

Dear Members,

Last week, we began offering two levels of Premium membership: Gold and Platinum. You now have the option to choose the membership that’s perfect for you!

What was previously known as a Premium membership is now Webshots Gold. All of the benefits and costs remain the same – in fact, you get more! Your membership will now also include 30 second Picture Shows. It’s the same great membership, just a brand new name.

We’ve added a whole new membership level as well. Webshots Platinum will give you all the benefits of a Gold membership with the addition of full length, downloadable Picture Shows for just a few dollars more!

Picture Shows are a new feature we’re able to offer through our partnership with Animoto. They take your photos and videos and create a unique video slideshow that bring your photos to life. We’ll share more information with you about Picture Show soon!

Team Webshots

This week’s creative challenge celebrates our animal friends with paws and claws. Both wild and domestic animals were eligible. From our DISPLAY PAGE, you can see that there were numerous excellent entries and it was very difficult to select a winner. The judges felt that these images were deserving of recognition based on composition, technique, color, originality, uniqueness of the subject, and overall execution.

We have received many requests over the years  for members of the Webshots community to have the opportunity to vote within the Creative Challenges. We completely agree and we need your help with testing a possible voting solution that works with our blog. Please visit the VOTING PAGE and vote for your favorite photo through 9 am (EST), October 3rd, 2011. Please choose wisely, you can only vote on each image one time. The editors have selected a variety of images to vote on, because unfortunately it wasn’t possible to offer voting for every photo entered in the challenge.

The winning photo will be featured next month on the Webshots homepage.

#1. Ah-Choo!!! by member ldeiter78 - Congratulations! Your photo will be featured as the big photo of the day on the Webshots homepage tomorrow!

#2. Tiger Stretching by member haneveercoremansshots

#3. Angel 60 – Here for my Friend by member peg353

#4. Effie Loves Seiko by member daliabloze

#5. Adventure by member jtanguay2

#6. Whatever I did, I Know I Shouldn’t by member antaver59

#7. Squirrel Watching by member albertsville

#8. Sally Lightfoot Crab by member andreandwendy

#9. She Loves Me..She Loves Me Not by member lynnie440

#10. Untitled by member huluyue

Please vote for your favorite photo (no more than one vote per image, per IP address) through 9:00 am (EST) October 3rd, 2011. The winning photo will be featured on the Webshots homepage as a future POTD in October. (Note: if you don’t see the vote button under each photo, please try FireFox as a browser) After voting, you may need to refresh your browser.

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Photo walks, a popular activity among photo-sharing communities, let us all be a part of something no matter where we are in the world. By taking a walk this weekend and sharing the pictures with us, you’re contributing to a global mural of life.

So put on your walking shoes, grab your camera and go for a walk. You’ll be surprised at the photographic opportunities that present themselves. We’d love to see all of your photos as you can submit as many as you like!

Please tag your photos with Weekend Photo Walk 200 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

Dear Members,

We are performing server updates on the site today and you may come across a few errors. We are working diligently and hope to have the maintenance performed by the end of the day. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience. Stay tuned to the blog for any updates.

Team Webshots

Photo walks, a popular activity among photo-sharing communities, let us all be a part of something no matter where we are in the world. By taking a walk this weekend and sharing the pictures with us, you’re contributing to a global mural of life.

So put on your walking shoes, grab your camera and go for a walk. You’ll be surprised at the photographic opportunities that present themselves. We’d love to see all of your photos as you can submit as many as you like!

Please tag your photos with Weekend Photo Walk 199 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

This week’s creative challenge celebrates our animal friends with paws and claws. Both wild and domestic animals are eligible! It’s been a while since we’ve had an animal theme and the editors are looking forward to all the images that we have never seen before.

Good luck with the next challenge and be sure not to miss the special announcements about upcoming creative challenges listed below the official entry rules.

OFFICIAL ENTRY RULES
To officially enter the Creative Challenge, you must tag your three submissions with creative-challenge-paws-claws. You can then view them and everyone else’s submissions on the DISPLAY PAGE (it updates about every hour). To find out more about this, read the Using Tags on Creative Challenges post.

Submission Guidelines
1. Our editors look for sharp, clear horizontal images that are at a minimum resolution of 800×600 (submissions can have larger resolutions than this). Currently, vertical images cannot fit in the homepage template. Therefore, we cannot publish vertical or narrow panoramic images.

2. Images with added text or images, including watermarks, logos, copyright symbols, graphic borders, frames and time stamps, will not be considered for first place or being featured on the homepage big photo of the day at a later date. Collages, however, are acceptable. Images submitted should be your own.

3. Please do not submit pictures that have already been featured on the homepage.

4. The Creative Challenge runs from 12:01 a.m. on September 14th through 12:00 p.m on September 26th (all times EST).

5. 3 pictures per person (regardless of how many member accounts you have) tagged exactly (including hyphens) with: creative-challenge-paws-claws

*Note: Images that don’t meet the exact guidelines can be submitted and viewed for everyone to enjoy, but please understand that we cannot publish images that don’t meet minimum guidelines on the homepage.

NEXT CHALLENGE THEME:  Changing Colors of Autumn - Next month, the trees will be vibrant hues of gold and red.  If your trees aren’t changing in early October, don’t worry, because there are lots of colorful autumn subjects that would also fit the theme. Because the autumn creative challenge is one of the most popular creative challenges every year, we will be extending the Changing Colors of Autumn challenge deadline one extra week. It will run between September 28-October 17th

After the Changing Colors of Autumn, the following challenge will be a short one, but while you’re out and about photographing autumn color, you can also keep your eyes peeled for subjects that would fit the next theme:  The Spirit of Halloween. The Halloween challenge will run between Wednesday, October 19th-Thursday the 27th. The winning photo will be featured on the homepage on Halloween – October 31st!

More details will follow in a couple weeks.