Capture Ventura County News

ALERT: Release Party on Nov. 21st

Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:49:48 -0400

We are excited to announce the Capture Ventura County book release party! It's going to be the coolest book release party our area has ever seen. Everyone is welcome. Bring your friends, family and camera! It's going to be a great time for the community to come together to celebrate the unveiling of the Capture Ventura County book. It will be the first time anyone sees which photos made the book. Prize winners will be announced as well. If you already ordered the book and selected "pickup at the newspaper" as your shipping option, you can pick it up at the release party instead. Just bring your confirmation email. What: Capture Ventura County Release Party When: Friday, November 21, starting at 04:00 PM and continuing until 07:00 PM. Where: Ventura County Star, 550 Camarillo Center Drive, Camarillo CA 93010 Be sure to visit the RSVP page and let us know you're coming. We hope to see you all there! Another thing: We're sure you noticed we ended up right under a half million votes. Wow! Thanks to everyone who voted during Vote Week. A half million votes is truly an amazing feat! One more thing... we're giving away coupons for the book. Actually, we're letting you give them away to your friends and family. It's kind of a way to reward you for being on the "inside." That way, your friends and family will feel they are on the "inside" too! Visit your profile page and send coupons to everyone you know! Share leaders are shown on the people page. Alright that's it. See you at the release party!

ALERT: The Cover, Revealed!

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:14:42 -0400

After adding up all the votes and looking through thousands upon thousands of photos, we are ready to reveal the cover! Congratulations Ed Jesalva for taking the shot that will be featured on the cover. You can find the cover on the Capture Ventura County main page. We're really excited about it. Thanks Ed! We are very glad you submitted it. Remember to order your copy of the book and share your coupons with your friends.

ALERT: The Last Days

Wed, 17 Sep 2008 18:51:30 -0400

Vote Week is almost over. Before it ends we need to tell you a few small things. First, you folks have placed nearly a half million votes for Capture Ventura County photos!!! Hooray! What an incredible feat! Thanks to everyone for voting like crazy the last few days. We have a good number of "power voters" who've voted for 100% of photos. Wow! Thanks to everyone for pitching in and voting. Of course there is a whole day left, so hop in and vote as much as you can to shape the book! Second, we are going to throw a release party for the book! It's going to be a great way to meet folks from Capture Ventura County and rub elbows with fellow photographers. Be sure to check back next week to get the skinny on all of the details. We'll also put up an RSVP page for everyone. It's going to be one happening party! Mark your calendars for Friday, November 21st at the Ventura County Star office in Camarillo. More details next week. Finally, we want to be sure everyone knows Thursday (September 18th) is the last day to take advantage of the contributor discount on the book/dvd. If you uploaded a photo, or voted for at least 150 photos, we gave you a contributor discount worth $5 off on as many copies as you'd like. That discount expires Thursday. So if you want to get the book at a huge savings, now is the time (like for you really early Christmas shoppers). You can find your coupon at the top of your profile page in the yellow bar, under the navigation bar. Thanks again for a hugely successful Vote Week. Now let's go out in with a bang! Vote like mad for one more day!

ALERT: Vote Week: Let's Go!!!

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 09:14:22 -0400

Vote Week is here! This is the most crucial phase of the project. This is your last chance to shape the book. This is where voting gets serious! You ready? We're ready. Go vote vote vote! Actually hang on a second. We have something we want to tell you before you get engulfed in voting. We are so excited about the number of votes cast so far. When Vote Week is over, we'll let everyone know just how many votes were cast over the course of the project. It's impressive, but Vote Week should really bump up that number. Please help add to the total! Try to get your vote graph up to 100%. We have a group of power users that sit around 100%, which is really great. So everyone pitch in and let's crank up the vote. It's all to help shape the best Ventura County photography book ever created. Okay that's it. Now warm up those clicker fingers and vote vote vote!

ALERT: Fall, Winter and Spring Results

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:25:41 -0400

The results for the fall, winter and spring challenges are in! Almost 500 photos were submitted in all, which is absolutely amazing. Plus, the shots are so beautiful... it was difficult to not pick everything. Ventura County has some beautiful scenery across all four seasons, and amazing photographers to capture it. When you have a minute, check out the fall, winter and spring challenge results. You will love all of the photos. We sure did. Thanks to everyone that submitted their shots. Oh, and only two more days to upload photos! Hurry!

Spring Results

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:07:27 -0400

Spring is full of color and life! We love it. Thanks to everyone who submitted photos to the spring challenge. More than 200 submissions for this one! Wow! Here are our faves.

Winter Results

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 17:03:00 -0400

Choosing winter photos to feature made us want to sip on some hot cocoa. Maybe you should grab a cup yourself and check out these winter shots.

Fall Results

Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:47:44 -0400

Fall is awfully pretty around here. Go check out our favorite fall shots from the 100+ you folks submitted.

ALERT: A Few Important Things

Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:56:19 -0400

Hey folks! We have a few housecleaning items everyone needs to be aware of so we thought we'd wrap them all up in one giant alert. First, do you realize there's about a week left to submit photos?!? That's not long at all! We've opened three new challenges to help fill some missing areas for submissions: Fall, Winter and Spring. When you upload photos, you'll see a spot to enter photos for Fall, Winter or Spring at the bottom of the upload form. To enter a photo you've already uploaded, go to your photo's edit page and enter it at the bottom of the page. To get to the edit page, click on the "Edit Photo" button on your photo's normal view. At the end of these challenges (September 8th), we'll feature our favorites from each season. Getting featured is good because it means your photo will get more views, and thus, more votes. So upload your best photos that show Ventura County in winter, fall or spring! Once the counter in the top right reaches zero, submissions will close and Vote Week will begin. Vote Week is pretty self-explanatory. It's a week where everyone needs to garner all the support they can for their photos. It's a week to camp out on your computer in front of Capture Ventura County and try to get your vote percentage graph (on your user profile page) up to 100%! We should top 300,000 votes... It's going to be a mad dash to the finish! Before the counter reaches zero and Vote Week begins, we need everyone to shore up their captions. Remember, these photos will be put in a hard-bound fine-art book. It's going to sit on coffee-tables all over the place. We're going to try to use captions "as-is" for the most part, but if your photo has a caption that just doesn't make sense, or doesn't really describe the photo, or has a bunch of errors in it, or is way too long... well we might just have to skip it or edit the caption.. and we really don't want to do that. Bottom line: take a look at your captions and whip them into book-form shape! (To edit a caption click the "edit info" button on the photo's page.) Speaking of the book, the counter reaching zero also marks the end of the contributor discount on the book. If you've submitted a photo or voted for more than 150 photos, we gave you a coupon code worth $5 off every book you order. Be sure to head to the order page and click the "buy it now" button before the chance to save is gone. Now go submit your very best stuff! Only a few days left!!!

250,000th Vote Cast

Tue, 02 Sep 2008 21:38:30 -0400

Congrats to user Marilyn Gould ! She placed the 250,000th vote! Now click on her name and say thanks by voting for all of her photos. We're looking forward to the 300,000th vote mark. At this pace, it won't be long...

ALERT: Mini-Challenge: 250,000 Votes

Wed, 27 Aug 2008 18:28:26 -0400

Voting is fun! We know you agree because you've voted more than 200,000 times already. Wow! For fun, we're going to put out a mini-challenge for the 250,000th vote. If you place the 250,000th vote, we'll feature you in a news post (link to your photos), which means more views and more votes for your photos. So get out there and vote vote vote!

50,00th Vote Cast

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 09:51:27 -0400

We blew past the 50,000 vote mark and are well on our way to 60,000! The 50,000th vote was cast by Sylvia Gabrie on this cute photo. Congrats Sylvia! Your votes are helping to shape the book. Everyone go say thanks to Sylvia by voting on her photos!

Mini-Challenge: 50,000 Votes

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:58:54 -0400

Voting is a hit! We've had users write us and tell us they are addicted. That's great news! It means the book will be shaped more like what you folks want it to be shaped like. That's the fun of voting! Votes have been taking place at a rapid pace. If you folks continue to vote like this, we should pass 50,000 votes in the next day or two. To mark the milestone, we're going to feature the user that places the 50,000th vote. Being featured is good because it means people will check out your profile, which means people will vote for your photos. Hooray! So get out there and vote vote vote!