Happy Holidays

Wishing you all a Happy Holiday time :)

Membership...

The last post concerning membership of the 1 Million group stated that we had just under 5000 members, and at that particular time were one of the fastest growing groups.

Following the success of the Competition, Im very proud to announce that the 1 Million group now has over: 11,300 members!

This is an amazing success for me, to have a group with that amount of members from my one simple idea.

Thanks everyone for your support, and please help to continue the groups growth by inviting at least one new member/image to the group.

And the Competition Winner is...

... lucky ticket number "59" which belongs to One Way Ticket aka Enrico from Italy.

Enrico has chosen a 1yr Flickr Pro Account (which is now active) as his prize.

Congratulations to Enrico from everyone at "1 Million".

If you would like to see more of these competitions let me know - I'd also like to know if anyone would like to sponsor a prize or two?

Competition - win prizes!

This competition is available for members of 1 Million only. 1 entry per member only please.

Prizes
The winner will be able to choose from one of the following prizes:
(i) Flickr Pro Account (for 1 year) or
(i) 2GB Sandisk Extreme III Compact Flash Memory Card (courtesy of Kazam Media Shop) or
(i) 8GB Dane-Elec USB Keydrive (courtesy of Kazam Media Shop)

How to Enter
Entry is FREE!
Entry is open to 1 Million group members only.
Invite at least 10 NEW photographers (non members of 1 Million) to join the 1 Million Group. (Existing members dont count)
Make a note of their flickr names and post them into a message below this thread (it should look like this)
Add one to the entry above yours (this is your personal entry number)
Remember that you can only enter the competition once.
That's it!

Competition Ends
The competiton will finish when the group membership reaches 10,000.

Finding the winner
The winner will be drawn at random at www.random.org using the post entry numbers as tickets.
The winner's entry will then be checked to see if at least 10 of their invites have been taken up. If not, a further draw will take place.
The winner will be able to choose from one of the prizes listed.

T&C's
Kazam Media Shop reserve the right to substitute a prize for one of equal or greater value (depending on stock availability).
Prize includes P&P to the winners home address for physical prizes.
1 entry per member only. Multiple entries will result in disqualification from the competition. E&OE.

Good Luck, and remember, you can invite more than 10 photographers to ensure your chance of winning.

If you have any questions, please ask them HERE (questions posted in this thread will be removed to keep it tidy.)

Bigger, better...

In June 2007 I posted to this blog regarding the fact that membership to 1 Million had reached 400 and that I was very proud to have that many members in the group.
In December 2007 I posted again, this time amazed by the fact that the groups membership had reached 1500.

Today I am looking at the group and seeing membership teetering just below the 5000 point! At the time of writing 1 Million is the fastest growing group on flickr.

It's wonderful to have a dream of doing something that could possibly make a difference in the world we live in, and turn that dream into a reality. Sometimes just having an idea can make a difference. Now there are 5000 other people all over the world who share this vision and are prepared to do their bit to help.

In the beginning there were people that told me that this group was completely unrealistic in it's aims - that there was no way I could create a group with 1 million members and 1 million images in. It may well be the case that this is a very long way off, but I hold tight to the view that it is achievable.

Recently, the group has seen two other people come on board to both help the group grow and moderate the images and comments, for which I am truly thankful (Linda & Rick take a bow).

There are two big things planned for the very near future:

1. The group page will be getting a major overhaul, with some innovative ideas for the page
2. We will pick a random member and conduct an in-depth interview with them (posted on the blog) to give them extra exposure and showcase further images they have.

Keep checking the group for more details. Dont forget to subscribe to the RSS feed for this blog so you will be updated when we post more information.
Onwards and upwards!

1 Million Group Statistics

Here's an interesting graph. It's updated daily and show the number of members and the number of images. If you click on it you will be able to see even more statistics.

Free software to get more out of your pics

Many photographers and creatives use PhotoShop and its variants to get the most out of their images.
Although PS is exceptionally good (I do use it myself), it is expensive and requires a very fast computer to run well.
There are more and more software packages available that allow you to get some exceptional results from your photos, and some of them are even free!

One of these is called Picasa and it's available free from Google.

Picasa uses the Google search engine code to index every image on your PC. You can then make collections and sets of the images you have, edit them and more. Any edits that you do are fully reversible and made on a copy of the original image. It runs on virtualy any PC so you dont need the latest and fastest machines.

I have over 1 million images on my server here, and Picasa can find one image in under a second from them. One of the "hidden" features is that you can even search for images by colour!

You can get hold of a free copy of Picasa by downloading the Google Pack here:

What's my BEST shot?

Here's the image I have chosen to include in the 1 Million Flickr group.

This was the last image taken during a photoshoot.
It's a colour original with the following modifications; B&W filtered conversion using Picasa, un-sharp mask, resize, lighten, black-out background, clone out minor imperfections.
The modifications took about 1 hour in total and was the parents favourite image from the shoot.
So far, its my most viewed and favourited image on flickr and is No1 out of 500 in Explore for Dec 30th 2006.

So why is it MY best? Well, it's the image that Im most pleased with. At the beginning of the session I had this image in my mind, however the parents were very conservative and only wanted the most basic of portraits of their Son. I saved it to the end of the shoot once I had achieved what they wanted.
After all the post-processing, I feel that this is one of the images that I have finished - Im happy with it as it is. It's an image I know I can show to anyone to demonstrate my skill and competence with a camera a lightsource. And it's an image that makes me smile loads both inside and out...

Will I take better? I hope so! But for now, this is my own personal benchmark.

Ooooh juicy new graphics...

Here's another new graphic to use anywhere you want. When clicked it should bring visitors back to the flickr group page:

Obviously works best on a white page...

To use this button copy and paste this code:
--copy below this line--
========================================================
<a href="http://www.flickr.com/groups/1million/"><img border="0" src="http://www.kasstzam.com/1million/images/join1mill.jpg" width="155" height="99"></a>
========================================================
--copy above this line--

What makes your BEST shot?

Several members of the 1 Million group have asked what makes their BEST picture?

There are numerous answers to this question, but the beauty of the group is that it's your choice of image.

It can be your technically best shot, where all your technical knowledge was used to get the best shot from a particular situation.
Or, it could be the shot where you were in the "right place, right time" and something that you will never get again.
Or even maybe that single shot you have that just makes you smile whenever you look at it.

So you dont even need the latest equipment, a box with a hole in will do...

Dont forget that if you take a shot in the future that is "better" than the one you previously used, you can change the picture in the pool at any time.

Choose your shot for your reasons, add it to the group pool and then share it with the world.