My First Photography Contest

Now that I'm getting into photography I seem to keep finding all these photography contests out there for non professionals to enter.  Of course some are WAY out of my league...

...oh, how I dream of being in National Geographic

or Smithsonian magazine...

But I did find one contest that I just had to enter.  The great company where I have my 9-5 "Day Job" puts on a yearly photography contest for all employees.  And since all of us are professionals in something other than photography I figured I might even have a chance at winning!  The winners in each category (there are 12 total categories) make it onto the yearly company calendar that is given out to all 1000+ employees.

 Here are my entries (I did some last minute photoshop work and cropping before they were submitted that is no shown below):

Category: Children

This is my daughter on Christmas morning...need I say more?

Category:  Still Life

This is a shot from the World War II American Cemetery in Normandy, France.  There are over 9000 soldiers buried here.

Category: Landscape

This is a shot from a trip to the Machu Picchu ruins in Peru.  To explain the scale of these awesome ruins...the 'steps' you see are actually agriculture fields for crops and are each about 6 feet tall. 

(and yes, we climbed all the way to the small house at the top!)

Category: Animals

This is a shot from the St. Louis zoo...it was so hard to get one of these guys to stand still!  But when they did it made for a great shot.

Wish me luck!