Author Archives: Jason

Last week some people seemed to get a bit confused about what was allowed in the Nature category (now called Nature Up Close) vs. Landscape.  Thus we had some amazing landscape photos of fall foliage submitted to our “Fall Leaves” challenge which we unfortunately had to disqualify (and re-categorize).  We don’t want those people to go unrewarded for their efforts so this week we’re focusing on Landscape photos of fall foliage.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Autumn Colors”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of landscape that includes the colors of the fall (see details below)
2. Submit a new photo under: Landscapes / Any Subcategory
3. Select “License for Stock” when submitting the photo (you’ll be required to enter a title, tags and a description)
4. Tag the image with: PWCautumn

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners
• The opportunity to make some money off of stock sales in the future

Rules:

• “Fall colored” foliage must be prominently included in the photo  (i.e. orange, brown, red yellow, etc – but not green)
• The photo must be submitted to Pixoto Stock
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCautumn”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCautumn-dq will be placed on the image).

The fall colors are in full swing here in Boulder, Colorado.   This week’s stock challenge asks you to capture the season’s colors.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Fall Leaves”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of fall leaves
2. Submit a new photo under: Nature / Leaves & Grasses
3. Select “License for Stock” when submitting the photo (you’ll be required to enter a title, tags and a description)
4. Tag the image with: PWCfallleaves

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners
• The opportunity to make some money off of stock sales in the future

Rules:

• The photo must have a “fall colored” leaf or leaves as the subject (i.e. orange, brown, red yellow, etc – but not green)
• Close ups of leaves only, Landscapes are not allowed
• Green leaves are allowed in the shot as long as they are used to add contrast to the fall colored leaf
• The photo must be submitted to Pixoto Stock
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Lude hand gestures will be disqualified (i.e. middle finger up, or two fingers up facing toward the camera)
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCfallleaves”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCfallleaves-dq will be placed on the image).

Our first weekly challenge for stock photos, Fruity Stock, was so successful (over 700 entries) that we’ve decided to add “licence for stock” as a requirement for future challenges. In this week’s challenge we ask you to tell a story with hands.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Expressive Hands”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of hands that tells a story
2. Submit a new photo under: People / Body Parts
3. Select “License for Stock” when submitting the photo (you’ll be required to enter a title, tags and a description)
4. Tag the image with: PWChands

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners
• The opportunity to make some money off of stock sales in the future

Rules:

• The photo must have a human hand or hands as the subject
• The hands must be telling a story or making a statement (e.g. thumbs up, handshake, clenched fist, making a shape, etc.)
• The photo must be submitted to Pixoto Stock
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Lude hand gestures will be disqualified (i.e. middle finger up, or two fingers up facing toward the camera)
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWChands”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWChands-dq will be placed on the image).

We’re so excited about our launch of Pixoto Stock phase 1 (which has been the most requested feature since day 1) that we’d like to celebrate by focusing our weekly challenge on photos submitted to the new service.  It turns out that food is the number one most searched type of stock photo on google which gave us an interesting challenge idea:

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Fruity Stock”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture with a piece (or pieces) of fruit as the subject (pay attention to full rules below)
2. Submit a new photo under: Food & Drink / Fruits & Vegetables
3. Select “License for Stock” when submitting the photo (you’ll be required to enter a title, tags and a description)
4. Tag the image with: PWCfruit

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners
• The opportunity to make some money off of stock sales in the future

Rules:

• The photo must have a piece or pieces of fruit as the subject
• The fruit may NOT be in water! (we’ve all seen enough of those…)
• The photo must be submitted to Pixoto Stock
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCfruit”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCfruit-dq will be placed on the image).

We are excited today to announce the immediate availability of the Content Aggregation Phase of Pixoto Stock.  Pixoto members now have the potential of earning money from their photos by simply checking a “License for Stock” box when uploading them to Pixoto.  Pixoto members will earn a fee when designers, editors and marketers purchase and download their photos for use in their editorial and commercial works.

Pixoto Stock, through the use of our proprietary ImageDuel voting system, will revolutionize micro-stock licensing for images.  Pixoto’s ability to rank every image submitted by quality gives us, and our members, four key advantages over traditional stock sites:

1. Crowd Validated: With the average top ranked image on Pixoto being voted on by over 100 unique people buyers can be 100% confident that people love the photo
2. Faster Search:  With Pixoto the best images will show up first in every search result eliminating hours of paging through mediocre images to find what you are looking for
3. Fresher Images:  An amazing stock photo submitted today will be on the top of the search results tomorrow
4. More variety:  Anybody can be a stock photographer with Pixoto because the best images will always rise to the top so we can source from a much broader audience

We have spent the past year focusing on building the world’s first scalable crowd sourced photo ranking system that minimizes the individual biases of voters and eliminates cheating.  With over one million images ranked we feel we are finally ready to turn our focus from providing our members valuable feedback on their images to helping them making money from them.

Over the next month we will be focused on adding licensable photos to our collection so that when we launch Pixoto Stock to buyers in October we will already have a robust catalog in place.

From the moment we launched Pixoto people have been asking for the ability to license the amazing imagery of Pixoto members.  The wait is almost over.

You can learn more about Pixoto Stock, and how to become a contributor, by visiting our contributor information site.

A lot of members have asked some variation the question “why is my win loss ratio the same as this other images but my ImageScore is much lower.”  I can understand the confusion that this might cause and we have debated extensively whether to even show the wins and losses of an image.  Ultimately we’ve decided to show it (because it is interesting information) but not to emphasize it (because it does not correlate directly to score).

The simple answer to all of these types of questions is that it is not the ratio of wins or losses that matter in generating ImageScore – it is the PATTERN of those wins and losses.

Here is an a dramatic illustration of why:

Image#1 (a not very good image) looses it’s first 10 duels and its ImageScore rises quickly at first (because the built-in new image handicap is being burned down) then settles down to an ImageScore of 350. Now the ImageDuel system makes sure it is played against some of the worst images on the site and it wins 66% of its duels against these relatively poor images.  Because the win/loss ratio against this group of images is 20/10 it means that the system overshot this image’s score on the down side (because of the 10 immediate losses) and has to bring it back up a little to find the right group of images to play against.  But note here that even though this image is playing against some of the worst images on the site it is still loosing 1/3 of the time so its ImageScore doesn’t move up very much.  In this case the image ends up with an ImageScore of 400 and with a win/loss ratio of 20/20 (i.e. first 10 losses and then a 2/1 win loss ratio after that)

Image#2 (an amazing image) wins first 10 duels and ends up with an image score of 600 after 10 duels. Now it’s playing against some of the best images on the site so it begins to loose 2/3rds of the time.   This image is still winning against amazing images so its image score stays constant (as the new image handicap burns off) and dnds up with an ImageScore of 600 and a win/loss ratio of 20/20.

So you see the pattern of duels is INCREDIBLY important in terms of finding ImageScore.

Here is another example:

These two images will have drastically different ImageScores:
WWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL (20/20)
LLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW (20/20)

The first one will be MUCH higher.

Confusing I know – but if it was simple to create an algorithm that works as well as Pixoto’s people would have done it long ago.

Sepia, blue-tone, red infusions now’s your change to try some of those crazy toning options you’ve been dreaming of.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Otherworldly Monotones”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of a landscape and turn apply a monotone filter that is not black and white
2. Submit a new photo under: Landscapes / Any Subcategory
3. Tag the image with: PWCotherworldly

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• The photo must be a monotone (non-black and white) landscape
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCotherworldly”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCotherworldly-dq will be placed on the image).

Great black and white photography has always set the standard for drama and depth.   This week find your favorite building and turn it into the perfect Black & White.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Black & White Buildings”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of a any type of building and turn it into a Black & White masterpiece
2. Submit a new photo under: Buildings & Architecture / Any Subcategory
3. Tag the image with: PWCbuilding

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• The photo must have a single building as the subject
• The photo must be pure black and white – sepia or other color tones are not permitted
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified (i.e. don’t upload a photo of sky line or a person with a building in the background)
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCbuilding”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCbuilding-dq will be placed on the image).

In this week’s challenge we ask you to get creative with reflections.   Let’s see what we get when we reflect an “artistic object” in a mirror.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Objects in the Mirror”
***

To enter:

1. Take a picture of a non-natural object reflected in a mirror
2. Submit a new photo under: Artistic Objects / Any Sub-Category
3. Tag the image with “PWCmirror”

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• Please enter photographs of a non-natural object reflected in a mirror
• The mirror must be clearly visable with at least 2 sides of mirror fram or edge must be showing.  
• The subject must be properly categorized in the artistic objects category
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCmirror”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCmirror-dq will be placed on the image).

In this week’s challenge we ask you to balance the subtle dance of light both inside and outside of glass by taking a photo of a person from the opposite side of a window.

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THIS WEEK’S CHALLENGE
“Through the Window”
***

To enter:

1. Submit a new photo under: People / Any Category
2. Tag the image with “PWCwindow”

Submit your Entries Now

Preview This Weeks Entries

Prizes:

• Top Entry will win a year of Pixoto Pro
• Winners will get Award Badges, 1000 Points plus 1,000 credits for future image submission
• A blog post will highlight the winners

Rules:

• Please enter photographs of people viewed through a window
• The window must be clearly visable with at least 2 sides of window pane showing.  
• The subject must be the person – not the window.  
• Improperly categorized images will be recategorized and disqualified
• Image quality (through ImageDuel) will determine the winner.  In other words… the better image will determine the winner not the better concept.
• Enter as many images as you like – only highest scoring one will be chosen for top 10 winners.
• Images must be submitted/resubmitted during the week
• Images must be tagged “PWCwindow”
• You may resubmit an image already on Pixoto, but please be aware that ImageScore, awards and points for the image will be reset upon resubmission
• Duplicates of previously uploaded, and not deleted, Pixoto submissions will be removed.

• Due to the popularity of weekly challenges, we not review qualification requirements for image images with an ImageScore of less than 500
• Be true to the category:  Images in the wrong category will be recategorized and disqualified.
• Entries that do not comply with the above rules will be disqualified (a PWCwindow-dq will be placed on the image).