Essence of Bellingham - Photo contest

Its that time of year again - where I sift through all of my "for fun" shots and try to find a few to enter into the city's Essence of Bellingham Contest - which is always an adventure and even more fun now that both of my son's are starting to get into photography!

Last year, my younger son Eli, took a ton of photos and entered just about every one of them, earning himself a "Best of Class" for the K-4th grade award, and a trip to the awards ceremony where he got to shake hands with the Mayor and pick up his certificate. He also managed to wrangle in 9 - "Best of Subject" awards and one honorable mention!

My eldest son, Christian won a "Best of Subject" award for his one and only entry as well and I was really excited this year when he asked to go take pictures with me and churned out a handful of great shots to enter for this year. Its such a wonderful experience - watching your children find a passion for the same activities that you enjoy and then getting to do that activity with them on occasion. Thats the best award in all of this - getting to do what I love doing, with the people I love the most!

I managed to get a few "best of subjects" and "Honorable mentions" of my own last year and this year I entered a few but am more excited for my children's entries than my own. You can view our winning photos from last years competition here.

This year, they put a limit of 10 per artist - so we really had to sift through and pick our very favorite shots from our stock piles this time around. It was pretty hard to decide - but I think we did a pretty good job of narrowing them all down.

These are my entries for the 2008 Competition:

"Red Go Line" (South State Street)

"Fiddling French Hen" (Fairhaven)

"Rusted History" (Fairhaven Water Front)

"Clapping Rainbows" (Cornwall Park)

"Window Shopping" (Old Town)

"Little Piece of Heaven" (Whatcom Creek)

"Cemetary Tree" (Bayview Cemetary)

"Frosted Wonders" (Lake Whatcom)

"Lunch Meeting" (Lake Whatcom)

"Bike.Walk.Boat" (Taylor Dock)

These are Eli's entries into the K-4th grade Competion:

"Old Town Cafe"

"Twins"

"Lonely Leaf"

"TV Head"

"Piercing"


"Old and New" (Self Portrait)

"Little Shop Of Horrors"

"Horse Fly"

"Best Place in Town"

"Alley Oop"

These are Christian's entries into the 5th-8th grade Competition:

"Paper City"

"Skater Shadow"

"Gummy Wall"

"Saber Neighbor"

"Music Man"

"Fruity Fun"

"Textures of Time"

"Eat Local"

"Webby Window"

"Spring Fling"

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And so there they are - our 2008 Entries.

We will know how we did sometime around the first of June.

It doesnt matter though - if any of our photos win this year (Though it would be exciting...I wont lie!) - because we found something that we can all do together from time to time and I already "won" when I got to spend a couple of hours with each of my sons, out on photo adventures this spring - no certificate from the Mayor can match that kind of prize. :)

We are already taking pictures for next years competition and I cant wait for those sunny afternoons when my boys put down the video game controllers and ask to go take some pictures with me for a while. :)

To see last years gallery of winners and photo entries - please visit this page.