Site Announcements for 2008

--- For more information, please see our FAQ, Rules, Guest Judges and Links Directory ---

April 28, 2008 Member Announcements

New Off-Site Photo Contest Winners Gallery

At the request of several members, we've created a gallery that members may use to display their winning photographs from other photo contests!

View our new gallery at Member's Winning Photographs from other Contests. The link to this new gallery has been placed under the drop-down "Photo Galleries" link on the main menu bar. Add your own winning photographs by:

1) Register your winning photo through the "Personal" photo registration form.
2) Go to the "Edit Photographs" page in your admin, select "Edit" for a relevant photo and type the contest information into new fields called, "Contest Name" and "Contest URL (the web address)".
3) The field "Contest Name" must have text added for your winning photo display in the special gallery. The title of the contest and the type of award you received would be perfect
4) The field "Contest YRL" is optional.

April 22, 2008 Member Announcements

Limiting Property Photo Registrations to (3) per Property, per Day

At the request of several members, MPP is now limiting the number of "property" photographs any member may post each day to (3) three photographs. This is probably going to affect very few members as almost all members post one or two photos on a particular property any given day or evening.

For those members whom it may affect, please accept my apologies and simply view this as a means to request the best work from everyone due to the "contest" nature of the website and our community's shared interest in displaying our best images to those viewers we hope to encourage to visit these beautiful and important lands.

If anyone has any questions, please contact me and I'll be happy to respond asap!

This does not affect the unlimited number of "Personal" photographs that members may register each day, and I encourage members to create "albums" in their personal galleries to display photographs of further interest to family, friends, and visitors!

April 6, 2008 Member Announcements

Vote Now for March's Best Photograph of the Month!

All members are invited to "Vote" for their favorite photograph from among the thirteen category winners selected from all photographs registered during the month of March 2008. The voting period will begin Sunday, April 6 and end at midnight on Wednesday, April 9. The link for "Voting for BPOTM" (Best Photograph of the Month) may be found in each member's admin. Simply click on the blue button called "BPOTM Contest, Vote Here!

Members must be logged in to cast their vote and only ONE vote may be cast by each member.

The photographer who has their photograph selected as the BPOTM
will receive a $50 gift certificate to B&H Photo Video and a Lowepro camera bag!

Architecture: Quiet Garden © Doug Beezley

Birds: Cedar Waxwing © John McCreery

B&W: Sunset and Cholla Cactus © Dwight Morita

Close-Up: Fluttering Feather © Myrna Erler-Bradshaw

Events/Programs: The Yankees are Coming © Angela Findley

Flowers: Intertwined © Gerri Jones

Landscapes: Snake River Overlook © Donald Chambers

Plant life: Reaching High © Chris England

Recreation: Walk in the Clouds © Isabel C Rodriguez

Seasonal: Snowy Perch © Barbara McMichael

Sunsets/Sunrise: Misty Morning at Beaver Island © Barbara McMichael

Waterscapes: Lake Tekapo - floating rocks © Phil Stone

Wildlife: Babies at Play © Terry Cervi

April 5, 2008 Member Announcements

Announcing the Winner of the Florida's Birding and Fotofest Photo Gallery & Contest

Congratulations to Jack Rogers for his photo "Face to Face", the winner of the 2008 Florida's Birding and Fotofest photo gallery contest, and also a Photo of the Year winner from the 2007-2008 POTY contest with MyParkPhotos!

The runner's up were "Great Egret Displaying" by Betsy Kellenberger, and "Reflections" by Judylynn Malloch.

The judges this year were staff from the Florida's Birding and Fotofest.

To participate in next year's photo contest with Florida's Birding and Fotofest for an opportunity to win a full package 4-day, 3-night stay at the downtown Hampton Inn and a complete set of tickets for the entire festival, go to your admin section for "Join a Partner Gallery" and click on the drop-down and select "Florida's Birding and FotoFest". The staff at the festival will add you to their gallery and all Florida public lands photos that you register with MPP for the following year will automatically be available to the Florida's Birding and FotoFest photo gallery.

Visit the Florida's Birding and FotoFest photo gallery to view photographs and find out more about the festival in St. Augustine from April 10 - 13.

March 9, 2008 Member Announcements

Congratulations to All February Monthly Category Winners!

Best Photograph of the Month (February)
Winter Watch © Amanda Haddox

Architecture: The Old Mill © Gerri Jones

Birds: Love © Miguel A Leyva

B&W: Winter Trees © Terry Cervi

Events/Programs: Buddies © Lou Kellenberger

Flowers: Elegant © Gerri Jones

Landscapes: Stovepipe Wells Sand Dunes © Carla Farris

Close-Up: Busy Bee © Terry Cervi

Plant life: Thistle © Carol Fowler

Seasonal: Winter Watch © Amanda Haddox

Sunsets/Sunrise: Yosemite Valley View © Jeff Sullivan

Waterscapes: Night Falls © Bill Combs, Jr.

Wildlife: Got Elk © Ernie Page

March 29, 2008 Member Announcements

Receiving Emails from Anyone, Members Only, Friends Only, or Not Receiving Emails at All.

Members may now go into their "Add/Edit Profile" section in the admin and select one of four choices for receiving emails. This is also included in the new member registration form so that new members may set how they would like to receive or not receive emails from other members or anyone visiting MPP.
See Member Profile

1) Allow anyone to send me an email
2) Allow members only to send me an email
3) Allow Friends only to send me email
4) I do not want to receive email

February 26, 2008 Member Announcements

Photo of the Day (POTD) Member Judges

Be a POTD Member Judge for a Week!
I would like to extend an invitation to any Full or Lifetime member to participate as a POTD judge! Those interested would need to remove themselves from registering any "contest" photographs for the week that they are judging and also adhere to the rules and guidelines for judging found in our Rules web page, number 10. Judging is something that certainly enhances your "critical eye" and would probably help in your own photography! All members who judge for any given week will be held anonymous so that they may also participate in commenting on other member photographs as normal. Please contact me if you are interested in being a POTD judge!

Ongoing Calendar

Mar 16 - 22, selected by member
Mar 23 - 29, selected by member
Mar 30 - Apr 5, selected by member
Apr 6 - 12, selected by member
Apr 13 - 19, available
Apr 20 - 26, available
Apr 27 - May 3, available

February 16, 2008 Member Announcements (Second Mention)

Most Frequently Visited Properties Feature

Add your most "frequently visited" properties to the bottom of your gallery Bio! Each property will be linked to a display of all photographs that you have registered for that particular property. The new feature will be a great way to encourage your gallery's viewers to visit the properties that you have visited recently. To add up to (10) property links, simply login to your admin and click on "9) Add Your Most Frequently Visited Properties to Your Bio".

California and Florida Partner Photo Contests

The California State Parks Foundation's (CSPF) Photo Gallery
Beginning in the first week of January, the CSPF will be displaying their new photo gallery to the public and inviting interested photographers to participate for various monthly and yearly prizes. The winning photographs will be used by the CSPF and the California State Parks to promote the park system and the foundation to new visitors and members. Prizes for monthly and yearly winners will be announced shortly!

The Florida's Birding & Fotofest (FBF) Photo Gallery
St. Augustine's birding and nature festival will be held Thursday, April 10 through Sunday, April 13, 2008 at the GTM Research Reserve Environmental Education Center. Photographers will have an opportunity to win a complete package for the festival, including a 3-night stay at the downtown St. Augustine Hampton Inn and a ticket package to select Festival events, by participating as a member with the FBF photo gallery and registering photographs of Florida's public lands. All photographs registered by participants and displayed in the FBF gallery from April 1, 2007 to March 31, 2008 will qualify as entries. One winning photograph from all entries will be selected by a panel of judges and announced during the first week of April.

We will be announcing the winner of the Florida's Birding & Fotofest online photo contest by Friday, April 4, on the MyParkPhotos.com Announcement page and also on the Florida's Birding & FotoFest website soon after the winning photographer is selected.

The Florida Wildlife Federation (FWF) Photo Gallery
The FWF 2007-2008 Photo Calendar went on sale in September and displays over 100 photographs from participants between August 2006 and July 2007. The calendar is used by the FWF to promote their organization and Florida's public lands to both members and patrons.

To participate as a new member in any of our partner photo galleries, please visit their websites (links shown above) and click "Register Here" at the bottom of their gallery page. For current MPP members, simply login to your admin and below the Join a Partner Member section, select the appropriate partner and click "Send Request". Your MPP membership will be extended to the partner's gallery and your photographs may be selected by staff for display.

February 12, 2008 Member Announcements

SPAM Email Received by Some Members Today

Several of us have received a distasteful email that was NOT sent by the listed member, but by spammers. I apologize if you have received this email!! MPP does not give away member's email addresses in any manner (we use the email form found in member's galleries and photo pages with links back to the website where members use the database to send messages back and forth to each other) however, it seems that our database has either been attacked by hackers or possibly (probably) the members who have received the email have had their email addresses grabbed by hackers through the listed member's own computer, possibly through their Outlook or other email program. We will look into this asap!! Again, we apologize for the inconvenience and we fervently hope that this doesn't happen again to our community.

Members are encouraged to send email to each other through the following Form:

Send Email Form for Members

Members receive emails from other members and are encouraged to link back to the website to reply to an email:

Receive Emails with Links back to the Form

This email feature for members provides an opportunity for everyone in our online community to write and respond to emails by members and visitors without disclosing an email address. Non-members who use the form to email members, however, must provide their correct email address to receive replies.

February 5, 2008 Member Announcements

Congratulations to All January Monthly Category Winners!

All members are now invited to "Vote" for their favorite photograph from among the twelve category winners selected from all photographs registered during the month of January 2008. The voting period will begin Tuesday, February 5 at midnight and end at midnight on Saturday, February 9. The link for "Voting for BPOTM" (Best Photograph of the Month) may be found in each member's admin area under the "Register a Photo!" link located on the main menu.

Members must be logged in to cast their vote and only ONE vote may be cast by each member.

The photographer who has their photograph selected as the BPOTM
will receive a $50 gift certificate to B&H Photo Video and a Lowepro camera bag!

Best Photograph of the Month (January)
Two Beauties © Lou Kellenberger

Architecture: Two Beauties © Lou Kellenberger

Birds: Bald Eagle Imm © Dominick Martino

B&W: Seagulls © Carol Fowler

Events/Programs: Holding the line © Myrna Erler-Bradshaw

Flowers: A Gardener's Delight © Gerri Jones

Landscapes: Red Canyon Butte © Chris England

Close-Up: Wings in motion © Johnny Villaronga

Plant life: Sea Grapes Leaf © Maria Gonzalez

Seasonal: Ice coated pine branches © Ellen Edersheim

Sunsets/Sunrise: Morning blast off © Jack Rogers

Waterscapes: Light Cave © Steve Sieren

Wildlife: Not a Chihuly sculpture 2 © Constance Mier

January 25, 2008 Member Announcements

Google Maps have been added to all Property Homepages!

We have been working on adding Google Maps to the property homepages all evening and Andrew was finally able to finish the initial segment of the project at midnight...long and early morning for him half a world away! But his efforts were certainly worth it and I'm sure you will appreciate the work as you see the maps embedded in each property's homepage. The maps are dynamically added to the pages with the park's address and name coming from the MPP database and interpreted by Google to provide a Latitude and Longitude for the map to display on the page.

The next step is to edit Google's code to allow for our member's latest photographs to be displayed with the Google maps for each property. I believe we'll be working on that over the weekend or early next week. Google maps are really a wonderful tool to add to websites and Blogs (to add your own embedded map to a website or Blog, see Google's maps and find "Link to this Page" and then click on "Customize and preview embedded map".) By clicking on the tear-drop shaped graphic, a viewer may receive driving directions "to here" or "from here" for the property.

Changing the Photo Comments Section of Photo Homepages

I've received both positive and negative feedback from the new feature for adding comments to member's photographs. The reason for the change was due to a request to make it easier to view the photograph while at the same time writing a comment...that was a little tough to do in the previous display where most people had to continually scroll up and down to view the photo while writing a comment. So we separated the commenting entirely from the photo homepage and now display the photograph directly above the comment form. This is true for both commenting on the photograph and commenting on another member's comment concerning the photograph. And when adding a comment to a comment, the original comment is displayed below the photo, so the secondary commenter may see both the photograph and the initial comment.

Please do send me your feedback and we'll try to make it as user friendly as possible for everyone!

Lots of little changes everywhere...

Much of the time, I feel like we're taking two steps forward and one step back, but if you walk long enough it actually feels like you're getting somewhere. The same is true for many of the features on MPP. We constant tweak and enhance features on the site as much as possible as we have the time each week. (Andrew and I work on the site about every third day for approximately 3 hours).

Some of the most recent changes were to the Blogs and especially creating the property Blog, which Monnie Ryan is using to write a Blog for the Mill Creek Metroparks. Another change was to the admin display of member's personal Blogs, making the Blog Chapter section a little more coherent.

Probably the most time spent developing and maintaining the site in the past month has been a redesign for the "Guest" member admin and making their admin page as clean and uncluttered as possible. Hopefully we have designed their first experience with MPP to be a positive one and easy to navigate through their admin and various gallery sections.

For those who have been members for years and have seen it grow in members and complexity (some hits and some misses), you've had the advantage of learning various features pretty much one at a time. For new members, they are being hit all at once with many new features and options and I'm sure it's overwhelming! That's why we created the MPP Guide and I certainly hope that is working out and new members are asking for assistance from current longtime members when necessary. Many thanks to all who have volunteered to guide the new members! :)

January 13, 2008 Member Announcements

And here are the category winners for December's monthly contest!

January 10, 2008 Member Announcements

Voting for the Best Photograph of the Month (BPOTM) for December!

We're going to bring back the monthly voting by members for their choice of the best photograph of the month!

All members are invited to "Vote" for one photograph from each of the twelve category winners from all photographs registered during the month of December 2007. We'll begin the voting period tonight and end it approximately on midnight on Saturday, January 12.

Members must be logged in to cast their vote and only ONE vote may be cast by each member.

The photographer who has their photograph selected as the BPOTM
will receive a $50 gift certificate to B&H Photo Video.

Blog Renovation and a New Blog Section for Individual Properties! (continued)

For the past week we've been working on adding "Property Blogs" to MPP and interconnecting them between the property and the member's photo gallery for display on both pages. This is now complete and I encourage you to read the first property Blog by Monnie Ryan who has volunteered to maintain the Mill Creek Metroparks Blog, which may now also be read from her personal gallery. All members who would like and have the available time to maintain a Blog for a favorite or nearby public property are invited to participate. A part of your time would be spent encouraging those associated with the property to give you up-to-date information on the endeavors of staff, volunteers, friends and visitors to better promote the property to others. Please contact me if you are interested in starting an on-going Blog for a property. Thank you!

Property Comments by Members

We have also been spending time this week, and especially this evening, on redesigning parts of the property commenting. Members only may now comment through three different forms: 1) The photo registration form; 2) The property homepage; and 3) the main property comment form titled "Share Your Public Property Experiences".

The photo registration form is probably the easiest and quickest way to write a short property comment as you're registering one or more photos for a particular property. Below the property comment field at the bottom of the registration form you will see your most recent comment about that property, if any previous comments were made using any of the three available property comment forms. This will hopefully be a benefit to see what you last wrote as past property comments are viewable through the property homepage and the member's photo gallery through the top navigational menu (see Property Comments under My Photo Comments).

All property homepages have a property comment form at the bottom of the page for members to write comments about a visit to that property. With this form there is no need to register a photograph. Members may also write comments to other member's comments through this particular form.

And the Share Your Public Property Experiences form allows a member to select a specific property and view all previous comments made to that property. A new property comment may be made from this form also.

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California State Parks Foundation Photo Gallery & Contest