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Added by Hike Bike Travelon September 12, 2013
Saved under Photography
Tags: Capture the Colour, photography contests, Travel Supermarket

Last year I participated in a photo blogging challenge called Capture the Colour . The contest is on again this year with the idea being to showcase five of your best travel photographs which capture the following colours – white, red, blue, yellow and green .

The contest is sponsored by Travel Supermarket. Five judges – all travel bloggers with loads of photography talent have their work cut out for them. The quality of the submissions is amazing.

I’ve been nominated by one of my favourite fellow adventurers – Ted from. This is one contest I like as it makes you really appraise your photos in a critical light. I spent several hours yesterday while on a flight to Toronto going through a year’s worth of photos – no small feat considering how many I’ve taken! My take away from that exercise was to slow down and compose the shot.

Here are my entries for this year’s Capture the Colour contest.

White

In early January I spent the day with one of my photography instructors searching for snowy owls. We spent hours driving the deserted backroads looking for the telltale lump on the top of poles and were rewarded with five sightings. As much as the owls were a thrill to see, I enjoyed the desolate scenery of the Alberta prairie.

Deserted back road on the prairies

Red

On a two weekthis summer my husband and I spent a few nights in the small community of Pangnirtung on Baffin Island. The photo is of a trading post set up in 1921 by the Hudson’s Bay Company. Most years, providing the ice cleared out, a ship would arrive once in the summer to pick up furs and whale oil – rendered from the whale blubber and leave behind food staples, guns and other supplies. Today the bright red roofs are a welcome blast of colour in a desolate though beautiful landscape.

Red roofs of the Hudson’s Bay Company Old Blubber Station in Pangnirtung on Baffin Island

Blue

A weeklong trip to southern Utah last fall included a full day of. We were met with deep blue skies – a perfect backdrop for the outrageous hoodoo scenery the park is famous for.

Hoodos and sky in Bryce Canyon National Park

Yellow

A five day hiking trip in the remotein Colombia in February was memorable for its mountain scenery, unusual vegetation and desolate feel. These hardy plants sporting fuzzy, yellow flowers delivered a softening effect on this hard landscape.

Hardy plant sporting yellow flowers in the mountains of Colombia

Green

On the final day of my three dayin Cape Chignecto Park in Nova Scotia – when my feet were aching and I just wanted to be finished – I came across this fog forest. It had an otherworldly feel to it – quiet, wet and green – so green I had to stop and revel in it.

Nothing but green in the Fog Forest, Cape Chignecto Provincial Park

I nominate the following five bloggers:

I’m linking up with Travel Photo Discovery’s Travel Photo Monday.

Vote for my article on WorldTravelist.com, sharing the best travel content on the web.

About Hike Bike Travel
Avid world traveler. Craves adventure – & the odd wildly epic day. Gardener. Reader. Wine lover. Next big project – a book on 100 Canadian outdoor adventures.
View all posts by Hike Bike Travel →

Everyone wants to get more traffic, social media exposure and email subscribers to their blogs. Driving traffic to the blog is number one issue that most of the bloggers are facing these days.

If you have spent a few months in blogosphere, chances are you are familiar with the standard techniques to drive traffic and email subscribers.

Here are few common techniques that most bloggers are using these days

All these techniques require a lot of time and hard work.

What if you could able to get traffic, social media exposure and subscribers without following the above techniques? Yes, you heard it right. I am talking about a very powerful technique – hosting a contest on your blog.

When I first started WP Kube (a WordPress MarketingBlog), I did a very simple contest without using any plugin or app and got good traffic & social media exposure for a blog that’s barely a month old. That’s when I came to know about the power of giveaways.

Now I use apps like Rafflecopter and Contest domination for holding the contests or giveaways.

My favorite app when it comes to running a contest or giveaway. It has all the functions that one would need to host a successful contest. It is ridiculously fantastic app to run a contest.

It takes less than 10 minutes to set up and run the contest. With Rafflecopter, you can host as many contests as you can for free.

It’s a go to app for creating and running Giveaways. Use the app whenever you want to host a simple giveaway. With this little app you can get more followers, likes and email subscribers.

Bloggers are using it to giving away business products, tools, services, etc. This app has been trusted and used by some of the A-List bloggers.

You should use this app, because it’s going to save a lot of your time that you otherwise would have to spend on checking the entries, confirming and picking winner(s).

It’s not your usual app for hosting a guest blogging or referral based contest.

I know most of the BloggingTips readers aren’t familiar with this app, so I’m going to write a short tutorial on how to configure and use it.

The first step is customizing the general settings. You need to set up the social media accounts & what you’re exactly looking to achieve with the contest.

After you’re done, click on “Get the Widget” button and copy the app code.

Next, paste that code in your blog posts or pages or where ever you want to embed the little app.

Contest Domination

Contest Domination is a new WordPress plugin designed by Travis Ketchum.  It is a fantastic plugin to do a giveaway / contest on a separate page.

Contest Domination is a simple plugin that you can easily install on your blog and within few minutes your contest page should be up. However, it requires a onetime fee of $37 to run unlimited contests. It can be one of your essential plugins for WordPress, if you host giveaways/contests on regular basis.

No, Rafflecopter and Contest Domination aren’t same. Both are very different apps. Contest Domination is WordPress only tool, while Rafflecopter can work with any type of site.

You should use this when your ultimate goal is to collect email subscribers.

The plugin creates a separate page on your WordPress blog, like big brands / companies are doing. One of the most amazing features of this plugin is it has a referral system, which means participants can invite their friends & earn more entries / points. Something that Rafflecopter doesn’t have.

Install the Contest Domination plugin in your WordPress, like you install any other plugin.

Next step, is to customize the general settings of the plugin, adding social media accounts and connecting the plugin with your email provider (for ex – aweber or mailchimp).

Once you’re done with the general settings, create a new post with a title & copy for your contest page.

Last step is to set the parameters – contest starting & ending date, entries per referral and number of winners..!!

What are your thoughts on doing a contest / giveaway? Please let us know in the comments below.