The winner for the “Thankful Photo Contest” is Image #1 by Amy!

So many of you echoed my feelings about this image. The lighting, the repetition, the subject matter: simply takes your breath away. And then to hear Amy’s story behind the shot that she posted in the comments section. Amy, I’m so glad the rain broke for you because you have blessed thousands with this image. It is a honor to send you DVD 2, Beyond the Green Box! Shoot an email to contest@fioria.us. with your mailing address, and we’ll ship the DVD off to you!

The “Random Voter Award” of DVD 2 goes to Anne Marie! How cool is this! Anne was actually the one who submitted Image #5!

Here is part of her comments on this shot of her lovely grandparents;

The last one is my grandparents and although technically it isn’t anything special (taken with a 2.0 megapixel camera in the evening), it is an inspiration to me. I love the story of how my grandparents met. My grandfather was in WW II and was at Pearl Harbor on the USS Maryland when it was bombed. In the war, he was knocked off of his ship and got caught in the screws of the ships’ propeller. He lost his leg as a result. In the hospital, he met my grandmother because she was the physical therapist who massaged his legs! They were married in 1946. They are still living – just moved into a retirement home – moved out of the home they lived in for 47 years! Anyway, thanks for letting me share and reminisce and honor them.

(How do we pick our random voters? Two ways, one technical and one not so technical. Brian uses Excel b/c they have this cool feature where it will generate a random choice for you by using a formula. Pretty impressive huh! I close my eyes and scroll the mouse down as fast as I can and then I open my eyes to see where the mouse landed! 🙂 Very technical, huh!)

And I have to do this because…well…you’ll see what I mean. The Pumpkin Contest had a close runner up. And the Thankful contest had a close runner up again. Can you believe it’s the same rock star mama!

Lilianna is her name! Both of these images are AMAZING! Don’t you think Lilianna deserves to win something!

After coming in second with such great shots two different times, well if that doesn’t deserve a prize of some kind I don’t know what does. Lilianna, I’m not sure if you have the DVD series already, so email us and we’ll send you something special! 🙂 contest@fioria.us.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the next contest. The last two have been so fun and inspiring, and if you are all liking them too why stop. Let’s keep going with them! 🙂

I thought about doing a theme contest for December, but I decided against it because I wasn’t sure I could pull it off with how full life is around the holidays. Instead, we’re going to do a contest around the theme of New Beginnings as 2008 is fast approaching. This means you have all month to submit your photos to contest@fioria.us. After the new year, we’ll post up the five finalists and let you vote.

Won’t it be wonderful to start the first week of 2008 with incredible, inspiring photos around the theme of New Beginnings! I can’t wait!

In the next week I’ll make a more official announcement about this contest, but for those of you who have been waiting for this announcement, start sending your submissions in! I couldn’t bear to make you wait any longer!

Oh! I almost forgot! The winner of the contest will get $100 off toward a 2008 workshop! The Random Voter will get the same!

I normally don’t post over the weekend, but I have a fun little favor type post for tomorrow if you’re around and surfing the net. You’ll see! 🙂