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'Take Your Pic' photographic competition
Take Your Pic competition exceeds expectations
The creative talent awakened by the Take Your Pic photographic competition for Telkom employees has exceeded expectations, say the competition organisers and judges.
"Holding the competition was a leap of faith because we were not sure what we would get back. We are delighted with the creative potential that has been unleashed," said Stuart Tudor-Owen, Executive: Brand and Sponsorship at the Take Your Pic prize-giving ceremony in the last week of March.
Praising the quality of entries received from employees, he said the competition would help Telkom to reduce its reliance on external image libraries, whose photographs are used by many other companies and often look posed. By contrast, Telkom now has a unique collection of fresh, original pictures for use on internal and external marketing and communications material.
The eight judges, most of whom are professional photographers, were just as impressed with the way Telkom employees responded to Take Your Pic.
"What came out of this competition is fantastic" said Pieter de Ras, head of Professional Photographers of Southern Africa, at the prize-giving ceremony. "The judges were very interested and excited to see the quality of the work of the Telkom photographers and if Telkom does something like this again, we would love to be involved."
Pieter complimented employees who entered the competition, saying that they had risen to a difficult photographic challenge. "When I first saw the competition categories, I was a bit stumped," he admitted, referring to the three competition themes - Connection concepts, Transmission concepts and concepts associated with Sharing and delight.
Emphasising that the judges had unanimously chosen the final winners and runners-up, he then explained the judging process:
- First round: By the competition closing date in early March, employees had sent in a total of 2 445 photographs. They uploaded these on a special Take Your Pic website jointly developed by Information Technology Services and Group Communication and Brand. The judges viewed the entries online and assessed them against the competition rules and technical criteria. To move through to the second round, a photograph had to meet at least 50% of the criteria set. In total, 250 of the 2 445 entries reached the threshold.
- Moderation process: As the competition moderator, Pieter de Ras reviewed the 250 photos to check that they did in fact meet all the criteria. At this point, images were disqualified for technical reasons and 240 went through to the second round.
- Second round: Again, the judges used an online judging process. This time, though, they focused on the creativity and visual impact of the photographs, and also looked at whether or not they met the category criteria. At the end of this round, the top 20 images in each category moved through to the third round.
- Third round: The judges came together at a venue in Johannesburg for the final judging round and selected the following category winners and runners-up:
Winner: Derrick Caird, Port Elizabeth
Runner-up: Neels de Coning, Nelspruit
Winner: Derrick Caird, Port Elizabeth
Runner-up: Derrick Caird
Winner: Riekie Grobler, Randburg
Runner-up: Arrie Bezuidenhout, Centurion
While the Take Your Pic competition is officially over, the results will be seen for a long time to come. The 240 entries that met all the technical criteria are being kept in a special image bank and will be used internally and externally to express the Telkom brand.