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 27 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

Whether they’re flying the great blue yonder, or perched among the treetops, birds hold a fascination for people across the globe. What is it about them that inspires you? Their brilliant colors and fancy feathers? Their graceful flight and cheerful songs? Let your imagination take flight this week and submit your best photos of birds for this creative challenge. This week your photos not only have the chance to be featured on the homepage as Creative Challenge Winner, but may also be selected for our newest Editors’ Collection: Wild Birds! Please note, pet birds are also eligible for this week’s challenge!

OFFICIAL ENTRY RULES
To officially enter the Creative Challenge, you must tag your three submissions with creative-challenge-birds. 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. Collages, however, are acceptable.

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

4. The Creative Challenge runs from 5:01 p.m. on May 28 to 3:00 p.m. on June 2 (all times EST).

5. 3 pictures per member tagged exactly (including hyphens) with: creative-challenge-birds

*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. Also, now that you’re tagging your entries, you don’t need to post links in the comments section anymore.

NEXT WEEK’S THEME: Reflections

Wow, you guys really came through with some creative and thought provoking images for this week’s Creative Challenge: Song Lyrics! It was another tough decision, but I’m sure you’ll agree that this week’s top three images capture the spirit of their lyrical inspiration.

#1. What a fabulous shot captured by member lynnie440 of this stunning swan in flight which embodies the spirit of the song “Ride a White Swan”. If you’re not familiar with the song, lynnie440 has included the lyrics in the image description. Congrats to member lynnie440—we’ll feature you’re photo on the homepage tomorrow!

#2. We can’t imagine a better shot to represent “I’m Sailing” than this beautiful image entered by member paquit2. Way to go!

#3. Who doesn’t think “Up, Up, And Away” when looking at this photo by member greenhorngrl? Another great entry and perfect image for this challenge!

Thanks to everyone who entered the Challenge and shared their stunning photos with us. To see all the entries in the Creative Challenge: Song Lyrics, visit the DISPLAY PAGE.

UPDATE: The intermittent photo display problem has been resolved.

Also, we are aware of the difficulty that’s being experienced with the slideshow and also with search. Our technicians hope to have it resolved very soon.

Regarding the slideshow, we have noticed that many of the customers who have been having this issue have been using Windows Vista. Some were able to resolve it by switching from Internet Explorer 7 to the latest version of Firefox. If you don’t have the latest version of Firefox, you can download it here.

Thank you for your patience!

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 26 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

Music is a creative art form that we can hear, but what would music look like if we could see it? Take a line from a song and interpret via photography, and be sure to include the lyrics in your title or caption! For example, how would you depict the lyric, “You’ve lost that loving feeling” by The Righteous Brothers? Have fun with this, and crank up the volume!

OFFICIAL ENTRY RULES
To officially enter the Creative Challenge, you must tag your three submissions with creative-challenge-lyrics and include the lyrics in your title or caption. 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. Collages, however, are acceptable.

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 May 21 to 3:00 p.m. on May 26 (all times EST). Due to the Memorial Day holiday, we will announce the winner on 28, 2008.

5. 3 pictures per member tagged exactly (including hyphens) with: creative-challenge-lyrics

*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. Also, now that you’re tagging your entries, you don’t need to post links in the comments section anymore.

NEXT WEEK’S THEME: Birds
From soaring eagles to your pet parrot, we want to see your amazing bird photos. But be sure to add that Creative Challenge twist to make your photo stand out!

The Creative Challenge: Spring Flowers was truly the most difficult Challenge to judge because all of the entries were stunning! You’ll definitely see many of these photos (and the albums they’re featured in) on the site in the coming weeks. To find the winners, we looked for an extraordinary quality that really made it stand out from the rest.

#1. We loved the energy that hit us when we viewed member rm_blizzard’s winning photo. The dominant color, classic spring flower and excellent cropping really made this one a winner hands down. Congrats to member rm_blizzard—we’ll feature you’re photo on the homepage tomorrow!

#2. We got two macros for the price of one in member paquit2’s engaging close up. The gorgeous colors are complemented by spring’s spokesperson, the bee, which adds a story to this photo. Nice work!

#3. The collection of colors and different flowers was a favorite among all the editors. We liked the free nature of member luiyau’s photo, a perfect example of spring’s wildness.

Thanks to everyone who entered the Challenge and shared their stunning photos with us. To see all the entries in the Creative Challenge: Spring Flowers, visit the DISPLAY PAGE.

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 25 and then post your links in the comment section. Your entries won’t be judged—this is just for the fun of it!

The team here at Webshots has been busy fixing the issues on the site to make a better experience for you! Drum roll, please, as we list the recent bug fixes:

Email Your Slideshows
When you tried to email a slideshow to your friends and family, you got an error page. It’s now working, so you can share slideshows with everyone!

Sending eCards
Some eCards that were scheduled to send in the future were not being sent, but we’ve figured out why and our engineers have fixed it!

Foreign Characters
We’ve updated our character encoding to UTF-8 so now you can use foreign characters in your titles, captions and tags!

UPPER CASE
We got complaints from members that when they uploaded filed with upper case in them, they would get converted to lower case, so they would have to retype the upper case again. No longer, my friends! USE UPPER CASE ALL YOU LIKE!

Global Tags
When you add a new tag to a photo you’ve already tagged, you’ll now see the globe icon next to it. Click on it, and you’ll be taken to an Explains page featuring photos and albums that share that tag.

Say No to Spam
We fixed some vulnerabilities on the bookmarks page, so now spammers can’t leave spam in them. Have you bookmarked something cool lately? Post a link to your bookmarks below!

Alerts
We’ve fixed issues with the settings keeping when you sign up for alerts, so now you can choose what you like and get it emailed to you or via RSS on a daily or monthly basis.

Help Pages
Our help pages weren’t displaying properly, but we’ve fixed that now, so you can check out all 108 questions!

And those are just the ones you care about! We’re also doing lots of back-end work to make Webshots the best it can be.

Wildflowers

Everywhere we look, tulips and daffodils are in bloom, so we want to see your new spring flower photos! Get up close with macro shots or take a landscape of wild blooms. We’ll feature the winning photo on the homepage!

OFFICIAL ENTRY RULES
To officially enter the Creative Challenge, you must tag your three submissions with creative-challenge-flowers. 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. Collages, however, are acceptable.

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 May 14 to 3:00 p.m. on May 19 (all times EST).

5. 3 pictures per member tagged exactly (including hyphens) with: creative-challenge-flowers

*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. Also, now that you’re tagging your entries, you don’t need to post links in the comments section anymore.

NEXT WEEK’S THEME: Song Lyrics
Music is a creative art form that we can hear, but what would music look like if we could see it? Take a line from a song and interpret via photography. For example, how would you depict the lyric, “You’ve lost that loving feeling” by The Righteous Brothers? Have fun with this, and crank up the volume!