Hello Lenzr members!

As some of you are well aware, Lenzr was attracting some serious SPAM over the last couple months. It pained us to see the comments sections underneath your submissions bombarded with Canada Goose jacket ads coming from countries overseas. It started slowly at first, spam here, spam there, but it was minimal enough that the small team at Lenzr was able to keep it under control by deleting the posts manually.

Suddenly, though, heaps of these low-grade spam-bot posts started infiltrating the website like weeds overtaking a garden. We didn’t have the staff or the time anymore to take care of the problem ourselves, and knew the time had come to make changes to the site to prevent such eyesores from occurring in the future.

We’ve added a CAPTCHA now which anyone attempting to create a Lenzr account will have to bypass, which should work wonders to clear up all the unwanted advertorial fodder. Special thanks to all members who brought this issue to our attention; it’s so nice to know what a great community we’ve got here. Let’s keep Lenzr clean!

If that was the good news here’s the great news: Lenzr’s got some new photo contests lined up for March and we can’t wait to see your submissions on the recovered website. Don’t forget to cast your votes for the current contests in the meantime!

Message from Rob Campbell, the Executive Contest Producer
Occasionally the Lenzr admin writes dispatches to the membership outlining positive changes and technical evolutions to the Lenzr website. We are growing ever more popular, but slowly, and not so much through software innovation any more as by hosting imaginative contests that appeal to the masses. Each contest is like a stage play, or a project that we mount – and we never really know how successful the live event will be until it happens. Each contest is a story, as I have said before, and every picture is a sentence in the multimedia document, and together we wait to see who wins, and how the story ends.

Regarding the Website Crash(es)
Already House for Renovation and Electronic Engineering matches are breaking the bank and, as it turns out, breaking the website too. There was something restrictive in the database tables? Something fuzzy was happening there, and it was breaking every day as the website peaked in users and activity.

What to do? Pay smart people to fix it quick was the solution. And that’s what we’re doing/have done. It is still and will always be a work in progress, I’m sure.

Regarding the SPAM
I cannot tell you how stressful and embarrassing it is to operate a community software based website that doesn’t allow users to EDIT or DELETE the ubiquitous spam comments that accrue in such destinations all over the internet. Even the admin can’t moderate comments in our new website. And yet we (sometimes) pride ourselves on developing thoughtful and intuitive software solutions… our Achilles heel is that we have overlooked that critical component that every successful user generated content / interactive design MUST have. Now, today it’s a soleful task to receive and reply to countless emails asking for remedy. To everyone with SPAM on their profile pages I apologize and encourage you to Report Spam in the Discussion Forum here. It will all be mopped up and wiped away eventually.

Regarding the Toronto Christmas Market Photo Contest

Holy smokes the Toronto Christmas Market photo contest on Lenzr is an incredible success! There are now over 300 images in the gallery! That’s more than twice as many photos in this Community Contest module than in any featured contest Lenzr has ever run in its two and half years of operation, which is over sixty contests. There are twice as many votes as the highest ranked featured contests too. It shows the power of cross platform marketing and the value of developing the photo contest feeds for 3rd party client website hosts. This contest has become an incredible example of just what’s possible when you host a gallery of pictures on your website chronicling an event.

This photo, Christmas sunset by a new user named silverlink is one of my favourites.

If you have a photo in this match, please watch the next video we produce which will hopefully go live before January first, that will show the actual judges live voting and making their decisions on-camera right in front f your eyes! hopefully, if all goes well. Keep your fingers crossed YOU could be a winner!

Here’s a snapshot of Lenzr’s traffic from Nov 22nd to today, Dec 22nd 2011

And that’s a great place to sign off saying ‘have a merry Christmas’ ; we all thank you for your participation and patience and your great photography – please  look forward to more great matches on Lenzr in 2012.

Community Contest Updates on Winners

This post is long overdue–eleven days overdue, to be exact. The Community Contests that were put on the new website right after our June 1st launch were test subjects. They were put there to test the functionality of the Start Your Own Contest component, which is, without question, the most significant improvement to the new Lenzr website. We are still testing this improvement and have not yet been able to present the optimal user experience.

We appreciate everyone’s patience while we’re working out the kinks.

The Most Glorious Colours

This was in effect the very first Community Contest ever created and executed on Lenzr.
A synopsis of the Glorious Colours photo contest read, “There is magic in every sunset, colour, mood, and cloud formation.”–this contest was looking for sunset submissions and the prize offered was a solar powered radio. The challenge was won by MrSlava with his Jamaican Red Stripe photo. The contest started on June 1 and ended on July 1st with 51 stunning photo entries.

A Line Has Been Drawn

The sun has produced energy for billions of years. Solar energy is free, and its supplies are unlimited. Every year, the Earth absorbs 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) of solar energy; it is time to harness it. SolarLine Power manufactures and assembles portable solar generators (PSGs) that are affordable, reliable, quiet, and deliver clean renewable power.

SolarLine Power makes Mobile Solar Work Units that can deliver remote power for industry, entertainment, disaster relief, and remote living scenarios.  If you’re currently using dirty, noisy, diesel generators for your remote power needs, or simply want to make your business greener, then you should consider a quiet, clean, environmentally friendly Solarline PSG. Portable solar power is here.

MrSlava with his Jamaican Red Stripe photo wins a portable solar powered radio.

The Eton Scorpion Wind Up / Solar Radio is a truly fantastic addition to any travelogue.  Mr Slava’s many friends will envy his new found ability to bring the music wherever he is, especially if the like the music he brings.

What’s In Your Garden Photo Contest

This photo contest asked for photographers to show the plumpest tomatoes, crispest lettuces, ravishing radishes, beta carotene rich carrots and anything and everything that’s growing in the garden. This contest was not looking for just a quick snap shot, it was looking for images with shapes such as, squares, circles, triangles, octagons and triangles that required the imagination. This contest only ran for a month, yet it attracted 51 photo submissions of profoundly beautiful works of art. Truly amazing. The What’s In Your Garden photo contest was won by Bev Jay, who won the Ames Lawn Buddy. This prize may prove to be perfect for maintaining that vibrant garden.

What’s in Your Garden was sponsored by The Grass Cutters

They’re not just tree huggers… they love lawns, shrubs and gardens, too. The GrassCutters are the first clean-air lawn care service in Canada. Their goal is to provide a clean grass cutting experience, and they’re busy building the nation’s first and best sustainable lawn care service that’s powered by renewable energy. They intend to eliminate and/or reduce our dependence on fossil fuel esp as its used in two cycle engines, (like most gas powered lawnmowers). They use quieter more efficient electric equipment, provide organic weed, fertilizer and pest control options and in some cases use a good old fashioned push mower. All this to protect future generations from the harmful effects of dirty gas mowers and unnatural lawn care practices.

Here is the winning picture, sunkissed, by user tluvr. The contest garnered 49 uploads which accrued 427 votes.

Living the Life Photo Contest

This contest was just for bragging rights – there was no prize involved. Lenzr members were asked to upload photos of moments of extreme relaxation–the perfect summertime contest and a laid-back introduction to Lenzr’s Community Contests.

This Community Contest was started by MuskokaGirl, a Lenzr member who runs her own successful Muskoka blog. The winner of the contest, as picked by MuskokaGirl (anyone from the Muskokas is an R&R connoisseur, right?) is Lenzr member Imoxide for this photo, called Living Free.

By the Light of the Moon Photo Contest

This contest page was home to some controversy when a new Lenzr member, omoxx1, blew the whistle on a couple of submissions that were using Photoshop and may (or may not have) pasted a moon image clip-art style into the photograph. For the record, here at Lenzr we see nothing wrong with using Photoshop on a submitted image; however, cut-and-pasting is just not cool for two reasons: 1) it’s not a photograph anymore, it’s a collage, and 2) clipping all or part of an image from an unidentified source is a violation of copyright laws and plain old plagiarism, the sworn enemy of artistic expression. This contest was offering a big prize, and when there’s a big prize on the line the likelihood of cheating or sabotage is higher–not just in a Lenzr photo contest but in any field of competition!

While we appreciate omoxx1′s passionate cry for fair play, we wonder how it could have been more inquisitive rather than accusatory–we like to give our members the benefit of the doubt. The photographs that were called out did NOT win the contest, and potentially, that may be due to the whistle-blowing. Lenzr doesn’t want to see this happen again so over the next few days we’ll be devising a plan on how we can better inquire into photographs that may look suspicious. Please bear with us as the site has only recently launched–we are working to have the Lenzr Forum reinstated as soon as possible, and think a suspicious picture inquiry section on the Forum would be more appropriate than commenting on the photograph itself. We also wanted to thank Lenzr member Martin Savaria, who for months has been submitting beautiful work to the Lenzr contests but also wrote in to administration to voice a number of kinks he’s noticed in the site. Suggestions from Lenzr members are highly valued and appreciated, especially at this early stage in what will hopefully be a very long lifeline for Lenzr.

By the Light of the Moon was Sponsored by It’s My Potty

It’s My Potty is a forward-thinking portable restroom company committed to improving the portable washroom experience. This company believes “using a portable restroom should be a normal, everyday, clean, comfortable experience; not a mind numbing, nose altering embarrassment,” and their products as well as unmatched customer service are testament to that. They’re green-friendly too–a pioneer in its field, It’s My Potty introduced solar panels in their units long before the green renaissance. Their portable restroom solutions have received compliments from the attendees of many formal, upscale events–now that’s clean!

The winner of the By the Light of the Moon Contest and a 5-day 4-night cruise was, this being a Community Contest, at the sole discretion of It’s My Potty (the Lenzr judges had nothing to do with it). So without further ado, congratulations to Dasha for her photo called Silver Night.

Lenzr contest producers are business storytellers, but they don’t know how their story ends until they tally up the Judges’ scores at the end of the match. The story ends when the winner gets their prize.

Lenzr is Canada’s first serial photo contest website; it’s an interactive arena for photographic arts competition and business storytelling.

Photo contest producers dream up visual challenges loosely related to their sponsor’s goods and services, and they administrate over a growing collection of user submitted content inside a sixty day campaign period.  In that time, Lenzr’s own social media marketers work really hard to engineer an ‘orchestra of participation’ around their visual fable in as many different niches as possible, all over the web.

Storytelling is a very important part of the process.   People want to be a part of something.  When they upload a photo on Lenzr, their picture becomes part of a bigger story – their fridge contains something unusual, or they once survived a terrible storm – these are sponsored stories from the April May 2011 session.  A printable coupons website wonders What’s In The Fridge? and a commercial roofing company asks folks to Weather The Storm and tell them about it.

People are storytellers too, and they want a place to share their amusing images, and they want a chance to have the best story, perhaps even more than they want the actual prize.

Web 2.0 is a term that describes the use of Worldwide Web technology to enhance creativity, information sharing, and most notably, collaboration among users. Tim O’Reilly defines Web 2.0 as ‘a set of economic, social, and technology trends that collectively form the basis for the next generation of the Internet—a more mature, distinctive medium characterized by user participation, openness, and network effects’.

The best Lenzr contests create a visual database of user submitted knowledge that remains relevant to the sponsor’s niche long after the contest ends.

Ontario Tourist Attractions and Canadian Beaches are two excellent examples of how photo contests can build a rich media resource to benefit society for the rest of time.

Each user submitted photo becomes part of the business story. (Note: the photos supplement the media-rich story for our sponsors, they do NOT become the sponsor’s property).

Graveyard Zombie’s Food Hunt by a member named lenzrgirl2011 is a brilliant self portrait taken from inside her fridge. This user found time to get creative and tell us a convincing story about her ‘long night’s work’ at a hospital and her sweet slumber during the day. She’s a natural storyteller, and will no doubt be rewarded with a prize.. someday. All she has to do is get into the Top Ten, and the Judges will be so moved by her story, they may give her composition the nod.  She could win $500 worth of groceries from a printable coupons website.

Custom made Lenzr photo contests are a great addition to any Web 2.0 interactive marketing campaign, especially longer campaigns that are theme related. Each sponsored page becomes a bastion of user submitted visual content that can be tweeted and added to Facebook.

What’s the secret behind Lenzr?

Shutterbugs locked in competition need friends to come vote and comment on their pictures so they earn a place in the Top Ten user-ranked images. Consequently they must promote their submissions on forums, art groups, and on their own Facebook and Twitter updates, and this action shares engagement through multiple people networks. That’s Lenzr – that’s why it works. People get excited about seeing and sharing their art.

And let’s remember the sharing won’t happen unless the story is cool –people want to show off their work and remind friends of their abilities, but they won’t play if it’s too commercial or too boring.

Voting is how we throw gasoline on the image stack and set it ablaze. The client’s story and brand logo is right above this well optimized stack of user submitted content. Our Google Analytics data always shows a sharp incline in participation right around the forty-five day period when voting begins, and that’s also a part of instigating a web 2.0 story. Lenzr builds a collection, and then optimizes it through voting.  The story ends when the winner gets the prize.

There is a small glitch on the website Sunday May 15 – the voting is down and the wrong messages are being displayed under all of the competing images. The contests have NOT ended.

Hopefully everything will be fixed before Monday May 16th 2011.

Okay THE WATER IS SAFE TO DRINK AGAIN !

The voting will begin Monday now when everyone is at work, instead of Sunday, when everyone was home surfing and looking for things to do including voting of friends’ photos …

Hey WHAT”S UP WITH SHAFTS OF SUNLIGHT?
Some people are wondering about the ghost contest that appears in the widget and but not in the index – and … some members have even managed to enter the challenge. But there is no official challenge yet – its just a premonition of something amazing that’s coming down the pipe… something new. Dont worry if you entered the match in May, it just means you’re first in line for the competition in June.

SOMETHING AMAZING IS COMING DOWN THE PIPE
I will update all members and readers very soon – this week perhaps, if I believe my dream has finally come true. Will the new website be ready for June 1st? Who wants a Lenzr t shirt ? we need a design – perhaps that should be a contest?

Before we can create, publish and promote this session’s many diverse photo contests we have to describe how the addition of Judges changes Lenzr. The timeline is one element that was affected – now voting starts five days earlier and ends five days earlier to allow time for the Judges to make their decisions. To preserve the smooth operation of Lenzr, its honour and integrity, this blog post will document how the processes ends and how one photograph will eventually win the prize.  The Lenzr Judges collectively decide the prize winner from the top ten finalists – that’s going to be really exciting.

How Does The Panel of Judges Decide Lenzr Photo Contest Winners?

On March 25th 2011 the voting on all pictures, in all contests will come to a dramatic conclusion as a Top Ten grouping is locked down in each unique photo challenge. A new message will then appear beneath all photos that says, ‘Voting has ended – Judges are deliberating. The Winner will be announced April 1st 2010’. At that time all Lenzr Judges will be prompted to visit the site and investigate the Top Ten user submitted, and user ranked images in each category. They will submit two numbers in reference to each contest – the first number will correspond to the picture they like best, followed by their second choice.

This data will be collected and published (with the Judges being represented by numbers and not names) to maintain as much transparency as possible. Yes the possibility exists that I, Rob Campbell the Master admin could change the numbers. Yes I could secretly affect the decision, but I can assure you, on my honour that isn’t going to happen. One thing that Lenzr has proven over and over again in the last year and a half, is that any photo can win (regardless of quality! LOL) as long as there’s no evidence of cheating.

The Lenzr Judges

The creation and implementation of a body of designated judges is the single greatest innovation to Lenzr since its birth in August 2009. This post will remain open and will be updated as more knowledge about just  who exactly these people are, and what they like … Lenzr is looking for celebrity judges. Are you a photographer, editor, or journalist of note? Please contact us. In the distant future there may be dozens of Judges, and Lenzr may have an entire Judges Community and a separate login for such professionals.

Jacques Surveyor

Jacques Surveyer is a web developer and photographer from Cobourg, and now Warkworth, Ontario. He’s a digital craftsman who really does create images, first in his camera, and than at home on his computer.

He’s a new ‘old friend of Lenzr’ that I first met when he came down to our office for a job interview in Oct 2010.  He didnt get the position – but I dont think he even wanted it. I remember we were in awe at how well he can talk tech and how much he loves using colour in his pictures, and how much knowledge he has about photo finishing and using effects software. Just last month Jacques Surveyer was profiled in Canada Blog Friends and this is a great place to really read up on him, and drill down on his core being. There’s lots of links here to his photo blogs, which are quite popular and full of great ideas. Jacques does exceptional travel journalism; he’s fond of creating destination review blogs. He created Pix of Detroit, Pix of Toronto, and Pix of Canada to host the photos and stories of his adventures abroad.

Chris Kovacs of Dark Shutter Photography

Chris Kovacs is a professional photographer who runs Dark Shutter Photography. He was born in Edmonton, Alberta in 1976, and currently lives with his wife and two sons in Vancouver, British Columbia. He’s a very popular fellow with lots of friends on Facebook.

Chris Kovacs is a Lenzr winner turn Judge. In December 2010 he bagged a Toshiba Netbook for uploading and promoting a black and white photo called No Trespassing in the Broken Factories photo contest.

So now of course he can’t compete in the Lenzr photo contests anymore, and we’ll all miss his signature black and white contributions. Chris chooses this black and white approach because he finds it less distracting than color. “Black and white images let the eye wander with the lines and shapes that make up the mood and feeling in my images.” He writes on his website, and adds, ‘I find that textures as seen in a black and white photograph contrast in such a way that they exude a sense of peace within a rugged place, for example the look of weathered rocks against a calm ocean as seen in a black and white image opens a calmness within me.’ And that’s pretty cool.

Brian Stirling, Joan Stirling

Two judges in one stop here – Brian Stirling and Joan Stirling are the proprietors of Stirling Home Studio and the sponsors of the On Stage at Home photo contest.

Lenzr is lucky to have these distinguished members of the Toronto Arts and Design community upon which to call for such ‘special duty’, and we’re even luckier they agreed to do it.

Two very established and highly respected art decorators / interior designers with a busy home staging business in the most metropolitan market in Canada are now sitting on Lenzr’s Panel of Judges. They’re celebrity home stagers and their work is exceptional.

Can you imagine the people in their Rolodex? After twenty years as interior decorators and designers they would know everyone – they’d know all the artists and antique dealers and furniture store managers that supply then with home furnishings, and they must have all manner of exotic clients, and busy real estate agents who count on their experienced eyes and dependable service; now Lenzr members can be confident of the same. In Brian and Joan Stirling we get two sharp minds with a lifetime of knowledge in The Arts.

Marc Gendron

Marc runs In The Eye of The Lens. He has been taking pictures since about 1988, working originally in B&W, he practiced something he calls ‘street level photography’. Eventually he switched to colour photography, and then calmed down and concentrated on family events, vacation shots and some wedding photography. In 2001, Marc changed careers and went into graphic design and bought his first digital camera. The creativity of graphic design awoke Marc’s latent zeal photography, and he’s been retraining ever since. He does freelance graphic designer, photo modification/repair and commercial photography to pay the bills and he works on astrophotography and macrophotography to feed his creative side. When he’s not behind a lens, he’s a father of two.

Marc has been involved in forums for close to a decade now, administrating forums with primary topics such as music, role-playing games and general chat.

Marc Gendron’s newest foray into discussion forums is a place called In the Eye of the Lens, started with a small group of friends. Here they’re hoping to attract photographers from amateur to professional to share their pictures, stories, tips, tricks and traps. On Feb 2nd 2011 Marc is quoted as saying, “…the website is still in it’s first faltering steps, and needs a design work-over, but we’ve got to start somewhere, eh?” and that’s the spirit of innovation that Lenzr embodies and embraces and encourages in everyone else.

PETS IN WINTER COATS photo contest winner heidip, her husband Ken, and canine family member Rocco proudly display their red electric snow blower. The LENZR photo contest requested photographers of all levels to submit pictures of their pets in their winter fashion outfits. Many of us have canine family members in society today and take measures to protect them. This contest celebrated the protection from extreme temperatures and inclement weather necessary for our furry family in the Canadian winter climates. Looking at the Lenzr contest photo submissions for the Pets in Winter Coats challenge, you can see the best outfit compliments their friendly personalities and also keeps them warm and safe. Well, Heidip’s photo of her beagle Rocco proved to be smartly dressed for the prairie winter. He was definitely dressed to impress with his knit sweater and bundled scarf.

Voting began on November 20, 2010 and the highest ranked photo won the Craftsman snow blower prize when the contest ended December 1, 2010. The contest was open to all Canadians age 13 years and older. The photograph of Rocco proved to be a favourite of the viewers with a final score of 1017.7 votes. The whole Pets in Winter Coats photo contest attracted 3500 votes and had 19 photos submissions.

This photo contest was sponsored by an exceptional snow removal company The Snowmen, servicing Pickering, Ajax and Whitby in south eastern Ontario. They’re well staffed and equipped to plow everything from the smallest residential driveway to the largest commercial parking lots.

The Snow Blower Prize arrived Dec 28th, 2010

The prize winner, Heidi Pawluk and her dog waited in anticipation for their snow blower in their Winnipeg home. “What better time than now for our Canadian winter” said Heidi. When asked about the arrival of her snow blower prize to Winnipeg she had mentioned that the Craftsmen snow blower arrived and her hubby Ken and pooch Rocco eagerly put it together. Rocco the beagle photo model had to help out in the easy assembly as well by having his nose in every part sniffing with sheer delight of the future winter possibilities with the new snow blower. Heidi said that Craftsmen snow blower was quite easy to assemble with straight forward instructions and is light-weight and easy to use. She also claimed that the fact that it’s electric was another fantastic feature that she loved. One just plugs it in and was all set to go, and of course it is environmentally friendly. Heidi’s husband Ken is looking forward to using the snow blower in their snowy city on the Canadian prairies. Canine Rocco is even more delighted than Ken because he will be able to clear some amazing paths through the snow for this furry hound to explore during the winter blizzard months. “Clearing the snow will be a breeze with this great win of a Craftsmen snow blower” said Ken.

Fingers crossed everyone, Lenzr usually gets real exciting when there is just ten days left in each contest, because when the countdown ends, the voting begins!  At 12:01 am Monday Dec 20th, 2010 the flood gates open and Lenzr will begin collecting human participation in the form of votes and comments. Please remember there are two types of votes.  As near as I can figure the unregistered visitor’s vote is worth about 86% less than a registered member’s vote.

Broken Factories photo contest has twenty six images to chose from, and Canadian Beaches photo contest has over fifty images in the queue. Making it Beautiful has approx thirty good pictures. When viewed sequentially, each contest tells a story -  they reflect all aspects of a subject theme.

Lenzr has a slightly different perspective on photo contests; on this website the picture galleries grow and are presented as an interactive slide-show to the voters. Each contest is a unique story with a beginning, middle and eventually an end – a happy ending for someone. Every day there is a little bit more recorded and the stories grow image by image, vote by vote.

Who will win?

With almost one hundred images in these three galleries it’s hard to say which is the best and which is ‘sure to win’. Indeed there are still more pictures being uploaded every day. Who are all these photographers? They’re not the usual suspects.

Later today, Lenzr admin will be deleting all photos that don’t match each photo contest’s criteria. MAKING IT BEAUTIFUL for example clearly stipulates that the photos must have a subject, somebody or something must be visible actually making something beautiful. Unfortunately a lot of submissions do not have this requirement, and rather than delete them from the index as they were uploaded, I have again opted to do one surgical strike and cleanse the board immediately before voting begins.

If your photo was deleted…

It was because it didn’t have a subject, a human or animal or extreterrestrial actually making something beautiful as per the contest requirements. Sadly some of the prettiest pictures were deleted. There was close-ups of plants and human haircuts and one shot in particular showed the back of a woman’s head, her hair tied together with a floral bow. It’s worth noting that this is probably exactly the type of content that would most please this particular contest sponsor; Aveda Institute hopes to become more widely known as high quality hair school.

More Photo Contests in February

In February 2011 there will be more photo contests, a lot more. These challenges will run 60 days until April 1st, 2011. At that time something totally amazing will happen – a brand new Lenzr 2.0 will launch in Canada.

Let there be Judges

The February photo contests will be judged by other famous photographers, notable friends of Lenzr, Canadian celebrities, camera store owners, club presidents, and glitterati along with that contest’s individual sponsor – the judges will be listed in the contest descriptions. Collectively the body will decide which of the top ten photos submitted to the competition is the best image, as per the criteria stipulated in the contest description.

Lenzr Lovers don’t Cheat.

Once again Lenzr is poised to watch the scores and protect the people who respect the system. With the introduction of Judges next round its hoped the quality of the submitted images will improved, as will of course the winning image.  Its also hoped the drive to cheat and be number one will also be diminished.

Over the holidays our staff is on guard to help safeguard healthy competition, and this time we have even better tools, and smarter proxy IP blockers. In the last twenty days we’ve moved the website to a dedicated server and have built even more impressive additions to our firewall. These improvements should really frustrate cheaters. Now it will be real hard to use a proxy IP websites to get fresh votes, and all phoney email address providers have also been blocked. In addition to the firewall security upgrades, we also have sophisticated scanner set to report shady behavior. In the unlikely event that cheating does occur, the perpetrator’s voting patterns, destination address, source information, technical interface relationship data and even more information can be gleaned and scrutinized.

So let’s go over some FAQs about the rules again…

What is Allowed?

Telling your friends to come and vote for your photo is absolutely allowed. Telling them to vote unregistered and then register as members to vote again is allowed. Voting for yourself from another computer is allowed. But using the same PC routed through a 3rd party network or conduit is not allowed and will be blocked / detected. Using mobile phones to visit and vote from many locations is undesirable, immoral, and kinda scary cause we don’t know how effective we can be stopping that just yet. I want someone to write me or tell me in the comments how to stop that. What value are comments in Lenzr scoring? Comments used to have real value in the Lenzr vote algorithm, now they have less weight, but they do serve to show administrators that the member has real friends who like the picture.

Is Lenzr just a popularity contest?

Yes right now and for the last time this photo contest website could be described as an image driven social media popularity contest – the prize winner will probably have the most friends, and indeed have the strongest loyalty among friends. This in itself is rather honourable, but ultimately we are building a user driven photo contest website and not friend collector reward program.  We’ve got to bring it back to the pictures.  That said we know what we have to do and are doing it – next contest sequence will have judges, and then a whole new ballgame will appear online in march 2011, fingers crossed.

Dec 1st 2010 marks a historic time for Lenzr. Membership in this serial photo contest website has grown significantly over the last month; never before have there been such high levels of participation. There have been over 10,000 visitors this month! Look at the spike on Nov 20th when voting began. Saving the voting for the last ten days was a good idea. It certainly has made everything more exciting.

For the last thirty days there have been eight photo contests running on Lenzr with over $3K worth of prizes to be yielded to winning members. The five contests that ended this morning have inspired over a hundred Canadian photographers to upload and share approx three hundred images. The sponsors are thrilled; their branded contests have attracted a lot of attention in many different social networks and image sharing sites.
But these contests are not without controversy.

At 12:01am on Dec 1st 2010  five Lenzr photo contests came to their natural conclusion. The real winners won prizes and their pictures will be discussed in great detail in another post.  Backyard Critters had over 120 images submitted to the index and almost 7ooo recorded votes. That’s incredible.

There are no new photo contests launching on December 1st.

What does Lenzr most want?

Lenzr is a user generated, user governed arena that showcases amateur photography sponsored by online businesses in full or as part of larger digital marketing campaigns. Its okay to visit and vote, and then register as a member and vote again. Its okay to post solicitations in friend networks and on Twitter and Facebook; that’s encouraged.

It’s not okay to use a proxy email server like Malinator to create multiple profiles from which to vote perfect 10′s for your picture. Its not okay to use proxies to hide-your-IP and issue multiple votes from the same computer within a short period of time.

Regarding vote fraud

My name is Rob Campbell and I run Lenzr.com which exists physically in an old warehouse building in downtown Toronto Ontario Canada. I’m not the only stakeholder, but I wear the pants. And I write most of the copy and I make the hard choices, and ultimately, I also make mistakes. But I’m 100% accountable. I stand behind my decisions, and I’m ready to take on all comers.

In the spirit of total transparency I write the following explanations and indeed my sincerest apologies to those curious contenders that were unceremoniously removed from the challenge in the eleventh hour.

Truth is, we were simply not prepared to stop IP proxy vote fraud as effectively as I had earlier believed. It happened in all contests, and it certainly dampened my enthusiasm for an otherwise spectacular session. Instead of being excited by the numbers, I grew apprehensive that there would be more witnesses and ultimately more anger to the unnatural accumulation of votes and the embarrassing demise of three or more contenders. Lenzr tried to be a purely democratic system…  we really did try.

Why delete photos at the last minute?

During the course of the contest it became clear that certain image submissions were being advanced in a fraudulent manner using 3rd party IP proxy services and other connivances. This has happened before on Lenzr and photos have been deleted accordingly. New methods were introduced after September sessions to give better insight into the source of votes, but unfortunately these devices didn’t work to prevent all types of fraudulent votes. On Nov 22nd, Lenzr admin made the difficult choice to continue exhibiting the contests without any interference, rather than issue public statements or email personal warnings or delete photos and ban members as the contest progressed, fearing retaliatory moves which the site was unable to prevent.

The decision was made to make a list of known offenders and remove them with only a few minutes left in the contest which appears somewhat cruel, but makes a lot of sense when it is explained. These people have violated the Lenzr Terms of Service and so their photos can be deleted at any time.

I chose to remove them from competition when there was smallest window of retaliation. You see we feared they’d use their proxies and bogus accounts to fraudulently affect other people’s submissions.

For example, Pretty in Pink was deleted from the Pets in Winter Coats contest.  This is an excellent example of vote fraud that’s easily detected using even the most basic analytical analysis tools.

Here at Lenzr we have very advanced fraud detection equipment, which I’m not at liberty to show, as well as basic resources like good old Google Analytics, which I can use to illustrate my point here in this blog.

Remember in the Pets in Winter Coats contest there were two highly ranked member submissions doing battle for top position. Above is a picture called Pretty in Pink which had a lot of comments, but they were almost all fake.  Just by using a simple analytics tool, anyone can see that the number one referring site to this photo page was Malinator.com * Please, click the picture, it expands.

The second submission was a near perfect vote solicitation in social media case study – a true win win scenario.

The winner of the contest was Dressed, Prairie Winter which features a beagle in a sweater sitting outside on the prairies – this photo collected friends’ votes from 21 different referring sites including, Facebook followed by SmartCanucks, Twitter, Frugal Shopper, and RedFlagDeals.   This participant worked hard to spread the message.  This member deserves to win the snow blower prize being offered by the sponsor.

Once again I must announce changes to the Lenzr photo contest model.

Starting Jan 1st 2011, all Lenzr photo contests will be decided by a mixture of member voting to bring about a Top Ten grouping from which the winner is ultimately decided by judge(s) appointed by the sponsor and announced at the beginning of the event.

I’ll be the first to admit that this makes more sense. The best photos will make the top ten, and although the commenting and community sharing frenzy will certainly be diminished, cheating should also be reduced.

More information on new IP proxy filters, formats, winners and prizes to follow. Do you have questions or criticisms? Let me know in the comments – we publish all queries and complaints.

Without warning, Lenzr spawns three new interactive photo challenges which will overlap the five attractions that are currently running on this serial photo contest website. These exciting new competitions are also scheduled to last sixty days which means they’ll end Jan 1st, 2011, and so for three lucky Lenzr members it promises to be a very Happy New Year indeed.

More diverse prizes!

Upload photos now and you could win a Toshiba Netbook, or $500 worth of Aveda cosmetics or three designer bathing suits from Bathing Belle Swimwear. All of these new prizes and sponsors will be detailed here on this blog in the coming weeks

Voting begins November 20th in the five current challenges, which end December 1st.   And voting begins December 20th in the three new contests mentioned above, which end Jan 1st, 2011.

LjCdo rings in with a self portrait behind her iPad prize!