The votes are all in and, unless there's some strange twist of fate, I've won! The publishers of Cycle and Style chose 10 out of of 35 photographs as finalists in their 2011 photo contest. The theme was "In My Hometown." I entered a photo of Madeleine posed at the end of Dayville Road near Allison Point. Across the bay is Valdez.
Visitor's to the website were invited to cast a vote for one of the ten photos. A new vote could be cast every day for approximately two weeks. After being behind by a large handful of votes for the first week, I decided to mobilize my network of Facebook friends. I posted the link to the voting page every day and asked my friends to vote for me. Did they ever!
I owe a huge thank you to all my Facebook friends who voted for me, but especially to those who reposted the link to their own Facebook pages and encouraged their friends to vote. Further using the wonders of e-mail, one of my cousins passed the link on to my aunt Julie. Julie passed it further to other relatives, some of whom I don't even know. One of those cousins passed it on to her college class and got them to vote for my photo, too. Amazing!
In the end, my photo had 302 votes and the second place photo had 196. Now, I'd like to think mine was a reasonably good photo, but I don't know that an expert would have judged it the winner. I am perfectly aware that my real prize is the knowledge that I can count on my friends and family to support my endeavors.
This whole process got me to thinking about the power of social media. Obviously I'm not the first one to tap into that power - everyone with an agenda to promote is doing it, and using many more methods than I did to reach even further. (I didn't even bother to use this blog!) It will be interesting to see if I can use my networks to further good in the world. For example, I have plans up my sleeve to further my fund-raising efforts for Relay for Life of Valdez in support of the good work of the American Cancer Society. I hope my family and friends will come forward with their support once again.
Until then, thank you again for making my photo a winner. I literally couldn't have done it without you!
