Remember that Glassybaby photo contest I blogged about a couple weeks ago? Today, they revealed the winning photo and I’m pleased to announce I won – here is the winning photo you can find on the GB homepage (I forgive the last name type-o, hopefully it will be fixed soon)!
We were actually in the car this morning on our way to SFO when I remembered it was today, May 1st the contest stated they’d post the winning photo on the GB website. After plugging the website into my phone, I was ecstatic to see it was mine! The photo was chosen by a panel of GB employees and will be displayed in the stores, on Facebook/Twitter and on the glassybaby homepage from May 1-3, 2011. I wish they were featuring it longer as I’d love to see the photo in the store and will actually be in Seattle on May 4th…missed it by one day!! I will also be receiving the Refuge gift set which are colors “Greenlake” and “Kumquat" as a prize.
The contest was called “fresh from the garden” and didn’t have many requirements, basically a photo of a Glassybaby showcasing a connection to gardening. I thought this would be a fun project to do and after reading about it, I had many ideas as you can see from the photos posted in an earlier entry. There’s actually a pretty funny twist to this story. My original idea was to plan a Mint herb in my light green Glassybaby that just so happens to be called, “Mint” (each GB has a special name that somehow relates with the color or cause). I thought it was genius. The connection to gardening would be an “herb garden” as I’d surround the Mint plant with Basil and Oregano since I don’t have much of a traditional garden here in California. I did move forward with this idea and it they were beautiful photos. The day after I submitted the photos, Glassybaby posted this advertisement from InStyle Magazine on their FB page. I couldn’t believe it…they even used Mint! Go figure. I knew once the panel of judges saw my photos for the contest, they most likely wouldn’t think the concept was as original as I did….which is why I needed a plan B.
Plan B was actually where the winning photo came from (so thank you InStyle + Matthew R.) . I thought it would be cool to set up a scene where the GB appeared to have been dug out of the garden. The secret here is you can’t make it look like you tried too hard. I started staging the arrangement with a shovel and in a hole, on a shovel, etc. One idea led to another and I ended up snapping a pic with my hand in a gardening glove, holding the GB as if I had just picked it from the garden….voila! My mom brought up a good point, the concept also mapped back to the “goodwill” image they use featuring hands. I didn’t think about it at the time but am pleased it worked out that way.
All and all, I’m pretty stoked. Not just for the gift set or the featured photo opportunity but because I did the best with what I had (you can view many of the other fresh from the garden photo entries here, there was some stiff competition). I was a bit discouraged after seeing what I though was an original idea go down the tube in a magazine advertisement, feeling for a second that I didn’t have a giant, beautiful designer-garden to work with or I don’t have hundreds of Glassybabies to showcase like I’m sure many Glassybaby fans do….but I made it work with the resources I have. It’s a small sense of accomplishment knowing even though your environment may not be perfect, finding “light” in a creative idea is sometimes just as good.
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