Karen Strunks Professional Birmingham-based Freelance Photographer

Vote for your favourite 4am Photo!

Before I say another word….

PLEASE VOTE FOR YOUR FAVOURITE 4AM PHOTOGRAPH NOW and then come back here!

Thanks!

 Whooo….what a day! A day for blogging. I’m just winding down from the day and I’ve been thinking about how we have ideas, and what happens when you start putting them into action.

The blog post on the 4am Project that you have (hopefully) just look at took 8 hours to write/post. Can’t quite believe it myself! Some of that time was spent contacting the prize winners to let them know they had won & to get permissions.

I thought I’d share with you my first experience at obtaining prizes. A lot of what I am doing with the 4am Project, I am learning as I go along. When I began the project just over a year ago I had hardly any idea about what I was doing or where I was going with it. What a difference a year makes, and I’m still learning a LOT. All the time. Every day. I’m thriving on it. My heart and soul is in the 4am Project. I love the project and I love that other people love it too.

SO..It all started when I had this idea to offer 4am Projectparticipants prizes. I wanted to be able to offer something back to all the people that set their alarms, or stayed up, and taken part. I wanted to make a gesture. I know folks like taking part, and no one was expecting anything, but I thought it was a good idea.

Hmmm, but where to start?! I’ve never asked anyone for prizes before. I started emailling relevant companies, telling them about the 4am project, but I didn’t have much joy.

I knew the Focus On Imagingexhibition was on at the NEC. It was floating around on my radar, and I was deciding whether to go or not. Then I had one of those light bulb moments – PING! Of course I should go! Who was there? Only the biggest names in the photographic world! The day before I hurriedly got together a Press Release, and the next day I set off for the NEC. It was the last day of Focus On Imaging (9th March), so I wouldn’t get a second chance at this opportunity for another year.

I parked my car and got on the shuttle bus to the exhibition. I grabbed a brochure and took a look at the plan and tried to orientate myself and see where the big companies were.  I took 10 minutes to sit down in a cafe, marked the brochure and planned my route around the exhibition. I didn’t want to be wasting time walking from one end to the other – every minute counted!

So, thoughout the day, I introduced myself to as many companies as possible, had a good chat with them and told them about the 4am Project and asked if they would consider donating a prize or two. As my Mother likes to remind me; if you don’t ask, you don’t get!

By the end of the day, I had met lots of people, and my dogs were barking.  Some said ‘no’ on the spot, but some said they would have a think and be in touch. ALSO, and I’m keeping my fingers and toes very crossed for this…..the 4am Project *may* have a spot on a stand at the exhibition next year! An organisation has offered to share their stand with the project! I don’t normally like speaking about things before they happen, just in case….but if that happens it will be amazing! Please keep your fingers crossed too.

I left it a few days after the exhibition before I started following up on the ‘maybes’ that I had received and then began my phone and email campaign! I wanted to follow up on the connections I had made whilst they 4am Project was still fresh in peoples minds. This resulted in some companies declining the chance of offer some prizes, some said that the 4am Project participants weren’t who they were marketing at this particular time, but to get in touch later in the year, and some companies saying yes, they would like to donate a prize. More phone calls and emails followed and prizes, that were suitable for anyone in any country, were secured.

Thank you to Nikon, Photocreator and Moo who donated these great prizes!

Great! I’ve got the prizes! I blogged about it and announced it on twitter and on the 4am project’s blog. People seemed to really like the introduction of prizes and announcement was well received.

So 4am on the 4th April happened and people from all over the world took part, including countries such as South Korea, India, Sweden, USA, Canada, Portugal and Indonesia. Over 1500 images were submitted from this event, making the total since the 4am Project began over 3800! Wow.

I had 24 prizes altogether, which meant selecting just 24 photos from 1500. Umm……!

Because I didn’t secure the prizes until relatively the last minute, I elected myself to chose the photos. I hadn’t got the time to get anyone else on board for this particular occasion, and to keep things simple I set myself the task. And what a task! I think I under estimated how hard it would be to chose and how much time it would take too.

I spent approx 4 hour a day from Monday – Thursday looking at every image, and narrowing it down to about 200 of my favourites. But I had to get it down to just 24. I agonised over my choices. I wanted to be fair of course, and to give a broad over view of images, plus include lots of different countries. It was almost heart breaking to select a photo, thinking “That’s the one!” Only to see that it was taken at 5.10am – it is the 4am Project after all and I had stated in the rules of the competition that the photos selected would have to be taken between 4am-4.59am. I had made the rules, I had to stick to them.

It was only this morning that I had my final 24 4am photo selected. Time to blog! I knew it might take some time, but thought I would be finished by around lunchtime. Bit of an under estimation! 8 hours. As I said before, some of that time was spent emailing the winners, but most of it was on the blog. Looking at it, you really wouldn’t think it would take that long, but it really did. No stopping. Just blogging.

Ideas! This is one example of one idea. Ideas are great, but they are even better if when you get them out there, start taking small steps and make them real. Just this one idea has helped me to realise that it’s important to plan ideas out and estimate what will actually be involved in making them happen.

Please take a few minutes to look through all the wonderful images of 4am from around the world.

Right now I’ve got some pizza waiting, some red wine, and True Blood is on, so I’m going to indulge on a Friday night

Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the project, who has given their support, and who has read this far. It means a lot.