Time to all but put a bow on the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest from this year. I got an email a couple days ago, that I thought was very sweet, so I thought I would start by sharing it:
Hi Mr. Bennett,
I just wanted to say thank you for all the work you put into the Pufferbilly photo contests. My kids have special needs and are kids who have never had a chance at winning awards for sports. The fact that they have been able to win ribbons for photography over the years means so much to them (and me)! Again, we really appreciate all of your time and effort to make it a great contest!
My heart grew 3 times larger after reading that. It was the kind of thing that kind of rejuvenated me and has me excited for next year. And I already have so many ideas for next year!
Monica made the book again this year and in there are the pages for the judge bios, so I thought I would share those:
And if you are wondering about my page where I thank people… I have to confess that I didn’t give Monica much to any help with putting this together. I didn’t even write the little screed that goes with it. But I will definitely do better with that next year. I did send her some pictures to put up, although she selected the “portrait” of on her own. It works. Here is my little part of the book:
To see the whole book, you can click on the link below:
A took a few pictures on the judging night. Here they are:
It is a Judgement Night tradition that we eat supper together. This year Nathanial made a brisket as a test run for the Pufferbilly Days Barbecue Contest. It was tremendous! Top notch! Jon couldn’t make it to the actual judging night, so he came over during the day and I recorded his opinions and gave them to Logan and Nathanial as the judging went on.
Next year, I think judging is going to move to the Sunday before Pufferbilly Days. Traditionally it has been on the Tuesday night. We always needed those extra days as the administrative process takes a long time. However, I’ve been able to streamline much of the process with the use of (and this kills me to type it) with merging data from spreadsheets. The other big help is that this year the Vision Bank (downtown Boone branch) was where the pictures were dropped off. This allowed me to pick up pictures every night and do the admin stuff a little bit night. Rather than one giant group of pictures all at once.
Plus getting the judging done 2 days earlier will help with having more time getting the displays together. This year, some gridwalls were added into the display. My original thought was that we would purchase a couple gridwalls every year and slowly eliminate the peg boards. I’m not sure the peg boards will ever be quite eliminated. Since this was the first year with the gridwalls it was a learning experience.
The pegboards are 4 foot by 4 foot. Where the gridwall is 6 foot tall and I can link together as many 2 foot panels as I have room for. This year, for the downtown displays we used basically two 6 foot by 6 foot sections. Then the rest were peg boards or just stands.
And while I write all this stuff that nobody cares about, but the goal next year is to take the aesthetic of the photo display up a notch or two. The gridwall displays were probably place a little too tight. But next year hopefully they will better distributed. The other part of the equation is figuring a better way to attach the entry cards with the images. Played with small clothespins this year. It was safe to say that was not a big success.
The break down of entries this year went like this:
- 118 Adults
- 10 Teen
- 20 Youth
Adult Class Distribution
- Animals – 30
- Black & White – 13
- Humans – 20
- Iowa Places – 18
- Outside of Iowa Places – 10
- Plants – 10
- Things – 11
- Transportation – 6
Teen Class Distribution
- Animals – 1
- Iowa Places – 1
- Outside of Iowa Places – 5
- Plants – 3
Youth Class Distribution
- Animals – 1
- Black & White – 4
- Humans – 3
- Iowa Places – 2
- Outside of Iowa Places – 2
- Plants – 5
- Things – 2
- Transportation – 1
Trying to figure out the classes for next year. Think it is safe to say that TRANSPORTATION will disappear. It has always been the least popular theme. Time to put it out of it’s misery. I might merge IOWA PLACES and OUTSIDE OF IOWA PLACES back into one class. But this is just me thinking out loud.
Here are some pictures of the photo displays looked like downton:
Animals at Soda & Pops
Plants at Madge’s Herbal
Iowa Places and Outside of Iowa Places at Ema’s Elegance
Things at The Boone Theater
Transportation at The Book Shoppe
Humans at Madge’s Herbal
Black & White at Infamous Ink
Youth & Teen at Paradox
Teen & Youth at Paradox
That is about all the thoughts I have about the Pufferbilly Days Photo Contest this year. But, there will still be some more pictures from when the displays were move to Art in the Park. But until then…