Launching the GeyserTimes Photo Contest
GeyserTimes has always been pretty bare-bones in its design approach. Heck, the only thing on our website that is not either text or frame are some icons. Our mobile apps aren’t much better — though some geysers have small avatar images that have been ported from Alan’s Geyser Notebook app.
For newcomers to the gazing experience this tends to be a problem. How can you verify that you are entering the correct geyser? Sure, there are great books and websites out there, but most people don’t dig that deep at first. This is why we’re planning to introduce profile pictures for some commonly entered or interesting geysers.
Since we personally don’t have enough great pictures of all geysers we decided to launch a photo contest online at photos.geysertimes.org. We all want our favorite geyser to shine in its best light now, don’t we? Especially with the current pandemic we also thought this might be a great distraction.
How It Works
Starting immediately you will be able to upload your photos. All of these are stored directly on our server and not transmitted to any third-party (e.g. Google or Facebook). You are advised to add an attribution notice to your upload, so we can later acknowledge your contribution. If you’d like to stay anonymous though, you are free to leave this field empty. You will also need to select a geyser and accept the (informal) terms. Head to the submission page now.
Once your photo is uploaded, it will be visible to everyone in the voting dashboard. This is where all users can vote for their favorite photo of each geyser. Each user gets one vote per geyser. Voting will start on May 1, 2020 and is staggered — each day a new geyser will open for voting while a previous one closes. The voting period is 7 days for each geyser. Head to the dashboard page now.
Once voting is closed the results are shown on the specific geyser page. In most cases, the photo with the most votes will be the new profile picture. If none of the photos have a sufficient majority, we might add a second and final round with only the two best photos. If this is the case, we’ll inform you in advance right here.
Submission Guidelines
While we’re not maintaining strict guidelines as to what photos should be submitted, we’d like to offer some general advice. The photo should be representative of the unique character of each geyser and be easily recognizable. Preferably, it should also look nice when cropped into a square shape as that’s the way it will be used within our website and apps. Light editing with e.g. Photoshop is allowed, but obviously shouldn’t change the content itself (i.e. don’t edit the Steamboat water column on top of Old Faithful). And last, but not least, it should actually show the geyser in eruption!
We’re currently accepting submissions for the following geysers: Old Faithful, Beehive, Grand, Castle, Daisy, Riverside, Great Fountain, Fountain, Steamboat, Giant, Morning, Fan & Mortar, Pohutu (N.Z.), Kereru (N.Z.) and Strokkur (Iceland). So if you have a great photo that you’d be willing to share, please submit it to the contest. Also, if you think another geyser should be included, please let us know.
