We are excited to release the short list of candidates for our First Photo Essay Competition. There are 49 candidates, in four final categories: Everyday Life, Travel and Places, Rituals, and General.

By far, the most submissions were to the General category. Furthermore, per contest guidelines, we combined a number of qualified submissions into the General category since the individual categories did not attract enough entries. For examples, we only received a handful of submissions for the Sports and Adventure category, of which two were qualified as entries. Therefore, do not be alarmed if you see your entry Short Listed under the General category.

The short list was selected from all qualified entries posted on pixelhose.com. The decision process was rather straightforward: An entry was included in the Short List if one or more of the following conditions were applicable:

• The submission received at least 20 Facebook “Likes” or Comments, or 20 Tweets, or 20 Google +1 posts. In this case the entry was automatically added to the Short List. We picked twenty because, not including the extremes, 20 was the average number of votes submissions seemed to get.
• The submission received less than 20 votes but if the comments on the page indicated the community enjoyed the work, we added the submission to the Short List.
• Finally, your work was also added to the Short List if our staff judged the work worthy of further consideration, even if the above conditions were not met.

Of course, please let us know by emailing photo-essay-1@pixelhose.com if we missed something.

The fiinal step of the process is similar. You have until Midnight, January 31, 2013 to promote your work for additional votes. HOWEVER, the final decision will put more emphasis on COMMENTS than the quick “Like.” Clearly, this is because we believe unless your works is appreciated, your followers would not take the time to actually post a comment, whereas most people will “flick a like” just because someone asked them!

So put the emphasis on asking your friends/followers to COMMENT about why they like your submission.

It has been humbling to see so many wonderful works submitted to our contest. Thank you one and all.

Here is the List and Good Luck!

Bob Dourandish
Publisher

Everyday Life Category Short List (Alphabetical by Title)

Rituals Category Short List (Alphabetical by Title)

Travel and Places Category Short List (Alphabetical by Title)

General CategoryShort List (Alphabetical by Title)