Are design competitions worth the time and effort?

I am just back from the post office more extortion as they extracted the cost of getting a competition entry submitted in time. OK so it's my own fault for leaving it until the last minute but really, £5.05? for delivering an A4 envelope, a light A4 envelope, to an address a mere two counties away?!

That said I am thrilled at the achievement of getting not one but two essays/articles written in the last few weeks. I'm not that hopeful about winning anything or even being placed but on a personal level I am proud of myself for knuckling down and writing first a Historical Review of a local National Trust garden, Wimpole Hall and secondly, perhaps even more surprisingly, for sitting down this morning at 7am and writing solidly for 5 hours to produce a creditable 2000 words on a garden visit I made in late summer, The Dorothy Clive Garden in Shropshire.

Am now wondering how it took me 4 weeks to write the first one which was only 1300 words longer! I am going to blame the research angle entirely, and yes the research took weeks :)

After the remains of today off, next week I am thinking about getting started on an entry for the Chris Beardshaw mentoring program.

Oh and once the results are out I'll publish both here, if of course they don't win awards and thereby publishing restrictions ;)

SGD Photo competition

Each year the Society of Garden Designers hosts a series of competitions for students to show off their work. This seems to be aimed at final year students in degree courses given time scales but some of the OCGD year of 2010 will be entering examples of their work this year.

The Photographic section is due today, 30th June, and I sent of the required CD (well DVD in fact) yesterday with almost all the competition information filled out!

The night before we had an exceptional downpour of rain followed by weak early morning sun. Perfect for flower shots. So in my PJ's I pottered in the garden at home currently burgeoning with floral offerings and shot a fabulous Philadelphus which has lurched to my side of the fence from next door. They have hacked it into submission on their side, on mine it flops and flows with abundant white blooms.

I often shoot in the garden in the early morning, camera and sometimes tripod in hand. I sit on a chair waiting for the sun to pas the big Bay Tree and filter over the roof tops for just the right amount of light on a subject. A south east facing garden turns out to be delightful it terms of good morning light!

IGPOTY 2010

Instead of getting on with homework I spent this morning filtering and editing some shots to enter into IGPOTY. As D said "you have to be in it to win it!".

So at 9 days 32 hours and 37 minutes to go before the deadline I uploaded my 8 offerings and am 'in it'. And, although I am proud of the shots, given the competition (!) am not that expectant of getting anywhere.

Fingers x'd

From Collages