Creating a Photo Contest Using SmugMug

RetrieverLife

Hi,

A run an online magazine - Retriever Life. I want to try and leverage SmugMug for all my photo needs. I would like to host a monthly photo contest on my site and I am wondering if anyone has ever used SmugMug for this purpose.

I am a SmugMug pro subscriber.

Thanks In Advance For Your Help!

Toni Leitao

Editor - Retriever Life
www.retrieverlife.com/

SamirD

Depends on what you want to do. SM can fit some pieces of a puzzle, but can't be the puzzle itself.

RetrieverLife

That is a wee bit ambiguous. Has anyone ever tried to run a photo contest from SmugMug? How would the contestants get their photos up?

PBolchover

I have seen photo-contests on Smugmug before. The photos were submitted using the Email feature.

RetrieverLife

Thanks PBochover. Can you tell me where that feature is? I am brand new to SmugMug... Thanks in advance.

J Allen

RetrieverLife wrote: »

Thanks PBochover. Can you tell me where that feature is? I am brand new to SmugMug... Thanks in advance.

HERE

Or you could try something like this

SamirD

RetrieverLife wrote: »

That is a wee bit ambiguous. Has anyone ever tried to run a photo contest from SmugMug? How would the contestants get their photos up?

Well, the question was a bit ambiguous too. How exactly do you want the contest to run? What's the workflow?

RetrieverLife

SamirD wrote: »

Well, the question was a bit ambiguous too. How exactly do you want the contest to run? What's the workflow?

Monthly! User submits photo, we judge, give prizes to winners. Pretty straightforward. We change the theme of the contest monthly...

SamirD

From what you've described, you can do the whole thing by email. User emails photo, you judge, you email winners.

Where do you want SM to fit into this workflow?

RetrieverLife

SamirD wrote: »

From what you've described, you can do the whole thing by email. User emails photo, you judge, you email winners.

Where do you want SM to fit into this workflow?

Hosting the gallery

SamirD

Okay. Forward the email with the attached image to the @email.smugmug.com address for your account. Now you have the contact information for each image and each image is in a gallery. Make the winning image the featured image for the gallery. Email winner and give them prize. Move images from this gallery to another one to archive the contest entrants/results. Repeat next month.

RetrieverLife

SamirD wrote: »

Okay. Forward the email with the attached image to the @email.smugmug.com address for your account. Now you have the contact information for each image and each image is in a gallery. Make the winning image the featured image for the gallery. Email winner and give them prize. Move images from this gallery to another one to archive the contest entrants/results. Repeat next month.

Thanks for your help Samir! I will give that a try...

Allen

I'd be careful with the email upload. Unless they add their info and send correctly you'll end up
with photos in the email gallery and you''ll not know who sent them. I have a bunch of them.

SamirD

Allen wrote: »

I'd be careful with the email upload. Unless they add their info and send correctly you'll end up
with photos in the email gallery and you''ll not know who sent them. I have a bunch of them.

That's why I told them to have the entrants email in their photos and then forward them to the email.smugmug.com. That way, they can communicate and get all the relevant information they need before the image gets entered into the gallery.

Otherwise, you're absolutely right, there would be a ton of images with no contact info, etc. It's amazing how many people don't read when entering contests and such.

SamirD

RetrieverLife wrote: »

Thanks for your help Samir! I will give that a try...

Glad I could help. There's some more tweaks that can be done to the concept if you run across issues, so feel free to post here with how it's going.