Please join me in celebrating our Phestive Photo Challenge winners! Last month our G+ community contest had a holiday theme. The idea was pretty simple: create a photograph that celebrates your personal holiday tradition.
It’s the 2017 Phestive Season, and we want to see what that means to you! Is it preparing for the Festival of Lights? Shopping until you can’t see straight? Traveling 27 hours to get “home”? Baking with Mom? Taking Dad to the hospital after that light-hanging incident? What about when you were a child? What memories come rushing back? If it’s part of your Phestive Season, we’re challenging you to capture it… with toys! [pointing to the community title] Whether it’s a memory, a wish, or your phavorite seasonal television show, we challenge you to show the rest of us! – R. E. Wolfe (community moderator)
With a description like this, we knew we were going to see images that ran the gamut from traditional, to darn right silly silly to simply beautiful as only toy photographers can create them. We were not disappointed.
The winner
Merry Christmas…. NNNOOOOOOOO!!!
Who can’t relate to Vader’s disappoint on Christmas morning? How many holidays have been ‘ruined’ because we didn’t receive a Red Rider BB Gun or the UCS Millennium Falcon? Marco Zanconi captures that frustration beautifully with this image of Vader and his newest toy: a Playmobile construction set. We are pleased to have Marco’s image grace our communities cover for the month of January.
The Runner Up
On His Way by Tobias Schiel
Our runner up, Tobias Schiel, struck a quieter tone with his entry. He seems to have found the right balance between mystery and tradition in this image featuring Santa Clause ‘on his way’. The use of cookie cutters as both a maze and a reminder of the tradition of leaving out cookies for Mr Clause on Christmas Eve was a clever touch. Beautiful image Tobias!
The Honorable Mentions
No contest would be complete without a couple of honorable mentions.
The Last Train by Konstantin Schmidt
The Last Train by Konstantin Schmidt evoked rushing to catch the last train home for the holidays. No one wants to be late for the phestivities!
HO HO HO by Júlia Vazquez
Sometimes tradition wins the day! This image by Júlia Vazquez invokes the magic of a winter wonderland and Santa on his way to deliver presents to the good girls and boys.
Per usual, the entire community came through with another stellar set of toy related photographs that where properly holiday phestive. Because these contests are hard to judge we wanted to take a moment to honor some of our favorite images from the rest of the entries.
Darth Santa by Wrek Carlos
Happy Holidays from Wendy Verboom
Baking Christmas Cookies by Victoria Eschen
Christmas Rancor by Ang Cheng Ann / Sunny
Snow Angel by Plastic Jake
Milk and Cookies by Mrs Playwell
Blacktron Christmas by Luigi Priori
Pheeling Phestive by Leila Chieko
K-2SO is Pheeling Phestive by Joseph Cowlishaw
The Moderators
A big thank you to all the moderators in our G+ community who strive to create images to inspire you! I wanted to feature a few of their images, because once again, they knocked it out of the park!
The Grinch Who Stole Christmas by R E Wolfe
Feats of Strength by Tony Tulloch
Aren’t You a Little Short to be a Hot Dog Vender by Julie Blair
Santa I want … by Jason Nvrmore
AT-AT Reindeer by James Garcia
“I’m feeling a present…” by Brett Wilson
Up Next!
A big thank you to everyone who participated in our December contest. We have another great photo challenge lined up for January; we will be joining in the #Jantmanuary fun! The rules in our G+ community are a little different from the ones you may have seen on Instagram. If you’re planning on joining the fun, here’s everything you need to know to participate:
The #jANTMANuary Photo Challenge has begun!!
Guidelines: To have a chance to win you just need to participate- post 3 new photos of your #AntMan figure (or Wasp/Yellow Jacket figure) during the month of January!
There’s a catch— your figure needs to be involved in day-to-day events – interacting in real world happenings, to scale with the real world. That’s the awesome thing about AntMan he is tiny and therefore works at whatever scale your figure is for, we have dubbed this real world toy photography! Call it an exercise in macro photography. Call it an exercise in FUN!!
PRIZES!!! Three of the best photos will be chosen (not more than one per a participant) for a very special #Krashes_Kustom’s created Minifig! – Jason, aka Doctor Nvrmore, G+ Community Moderator.
Shelly, I think it is a nice touch to show the pictures from the challenge here, give them a nice additional home – and now you even took the time and sat down to comment / interpret them! Wow! I very much appreciate it. You sum them up very nicely, too. Thanks for that!
Thanks Shelly, and all the other moderators, for the mention! Not necessarily one of my favorite photos I’ve ever taken, but that Mrs. Claus fig is just so cute, and the Phestive Photo Challenge was just the nostalgic sort of creativity boost I needed to come out of my long hibernation and back to the Toy Photography community. Looking forward to more challenges and new sources of inspiration in the new year!
Glad to see you back in action, Jenelle!
This was such a fun challenge this month, congrats to all the winners!
It’s a privilege to be able to judge such great entries.