Nobody else?

[captionist]

Looks like I'm going to win the April contest by walk-over... Too bad.
Oh well, looking forward to see what May pictures have to offer.

[BadBob]

That's fine. Your captions were very good, and I just wasn't inspired this go around, though I intend to participate in future caption contests.

[captionist]

That's fine. Your captions were very good, and I just wasn't inspired this go around, though I intend to participate in future caption contests.

Thanks! Looking forward to it.

[url2004]

I'll be honest... I personally didn't find any of the pictures attractive (in the slightest, really). I would have considered entering if I found any of the women attractive. I'm sure there are other sources to purchase pictures.

[swollen]

'Fraid i'm with url2004.

The pics were noooot good...

[Story_Fan]

I don't know if you're looking for this kind of advice, but I think you could get more caption ideas if you handled the whole entry process differently.

What if each image got its own thread, and the process of submitting a caption was simply typing an entry into the thread?

This would put more burden on the one person who has to parse the thread and deal with all of the captions that people have typed in as replies, but it would lower the barrier to entry for anyone who might submit.

I think that right now people might see that there's a zip file, and some kind of instructions they have to follow, and just say "I don't have time to figure this out."

But if there were a thread, in which the first message contained an attached photo, and all the guy had to do was type up "Oh, I know I promised, honey, but it's never too late for April Fools," then anyone could easily try their hand without having to unzip or read instructions or learn anything new at all.

[Story_Fan]

At one point, I did a set of about 15 captioned images. To do that, I had to create a process for myself, involving Photoshop, resizing each image to leave room for a black text area at the bottom, picking the font that I would use for the white captions that sat in the black text area, and so on.

I think that only a small group of people will actually do this amount of work, but that a larger group might be willing to submit a caption (as a text-only reply in a thread) if they can avoid the rest of the work.

However, if there were one central contest administrator, or coordinator, or "Photoshop specialist," he would only have to do the above setup work once. Then, when it's time to go through and parse all of the text replies, he can do by himself in about 20 minutes what would have taken 20 would-be caption writers about 20 minutes each to do.

This isn't a perfect plan, since the end result is that most of the submitted captions will look the same visually. But perhaps part of the prize for winning can be that someone with a more artistic eye will take the winning caption and find a more creative way to get it into the final photo.


Okay, that's the end of my suggestion for a way to get a lot more entries. Thanks for the work you've put in.

[BadBob]

Storyfan, I like the idea. I also think you are right, that few people will spend the time it takes to figure it all out, but would happily contribute a caption to a thread.

But there is a wrinkle to the idea that could save the contest administrator from some work. When the contest closes, a poll could pick the best caption for each picture and only that one gets "Photoshopped".

[captionist]

Storyfan: your idea would make it much more simple for people to submit captions, but there would be one negative effect (at least for me). There is something "magical" with a captioned picture that disappears when the picture and the text are separated. Reading through text suggestions in a thread would be just... boring.
Also, having to actually make the picture works as a filter - without that it would perhaps be TOO easy to submit a caption. If you go through the trouble of making it, it means that you think that you really have something to say and contribute.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, I'm just saying how I feel about it.

[BadBob]

Also, having to actually make the picture works as a filter - without that it would perhaps be TOO easy to submit a caption. If you go through the trouble of making it, it means that you think that you really have something to say and contribute.
But is the filter keeping out those with lame ideas and captions; or just those without the facility with image manipulation?

[captionist]

But is the filter keeping out those with lame ideas and captions; or just those without the facility with image manipulation?

I hope it's the former. Adding some text to a picture is not exactly rocket science. I'm not entirely sure though :(
Maybe we should give the current system another chance and see what happens.
On the other hand, it doesn't matter what approach we choose when we're not given any pictures that we can use...

[BadBob]

I hope it's the former. Adding some text to a picture is not exactly rocket science.
True enough, at least for those who have done it. And I have before. I added a few captions to the old board's pictures, but wouldn't have if I had had to do the deed with my software - I just didn't feel like spending that much time with it. It takes a lot of time to go through all the threads and there are a couple of other sites I like to check in on - all of this is coming out of the same "time budget". But like you say, maybe this will work out.
On the other hand, it doesn't matter what approach we choose when we're not given any pictures that we can use...
And that's right too - I wouldn't have posted anything even if it was as quick and simple as a message reply. The pictures obviously lent themselves to the topic and I could see how a "story" could even be woven between a couple of the pictures, but it seemed more like "work" rather than something inspired.

So here we are in the middle of May and where are the May pictures for captioning?

[TeaseMePlz]

Sorry, just so much going on we are a bit behind on everything. We will get some new pics up soon!

[Story_Fan]

Storyfan: your idea would make it much more simple for people to submit captions, but there would be one negative effect (at least for me). There is something "magical" with a captioned picture that disappears when the picture and the text are separated. Reading through text suggestions in a thread would be just... boring.
Also, having to actually make the picture works as a filter - without that it would perhaps be TOO easy to submit a caption. If you go through the trouble of making it, it means that you think that you really have something to say and contribute.

I'm not saying that it's a bad idea, I'm just saying how I feel about it.
I think there's probably no correlation between someone's ability to write an interesting caption for a message and his willingness to spend time figuring out a process for "quickly" adding it to the actual image in some image manipulation program.

Actually, if there is a correlation, it is quite possible that the people who can think up a clever caption are the ones who are even LESS likely to have time to "waste," knowing that you could have allowed them to submit their idea in 20 seconds rather than 10 or 15 minutes.

There's an easy way to test this. Do one contest where people can only submit via image manipulation and one where people can submit just by typing a message in a thread. Ignoring the bad entries, see which contest produces more good entries.

However it turns out, I thank all the creative people that keep producing sexy writing, images, stories, and so on.