Landscaping is an art form combining aspects of construction with the forces of nature. Lenzr’s timely new contest, Landscaping and Lawn Care, wants to see your submissions of nature as a canvas. Just as a painter blends colour on their palette, so too do skilled landscapers who may plant lavender with its delicate hints of muted green and purple underneath the rich burgundy of a Japanese Maple. Landscaping requires more than just getting on your hands and knees and working with the earth; the aesthetics of a beautiful lawn space require planning as well as pruning.

Colour, along with form, lines, scale and texture, are the basic elements of landscaping. There are many options to consider while planning your backyard oasis: will the plants be local or exotic? Will you incorporate non-organic materials, such as rocks or mirrors, into your space? Will your landscaping design serve a practical purpose, such as thick shrubbery intended to keep at bay the prying eyes of peeping toms?

Your photograph should tell a story to our judges. Why has your subject been designed the way it has? This photograph of a square in Oaxaca City, Mexico shows a plot of agave plants, significant because agave is the ingredient of regional drinks tequila and mezcal, aesthetically pleasing because the spiky appearance of the plant works nicely with the palm trees which share a similar shape. Show us a manicured landscape with a story behind it and you could win!

This photo contest is sponsored by The Grass Cutters, a cutting-edge property maintenance and landscaping company that also has the distinction of being the first clean air lawn service in Canada. The Grass Cutters epitomizes the term ‘lawn care’ with their 100% zero emissions, sustainable lawn care system powered by renewable energy. The Grass Cutters is a company that not only provides a first-class property maintenance service, it also sets a standard that benefits the planet we live on; “We believe that being environmentally friendly should start with your front lawn,” says the company’s website.

The winner of this contest can get environmentally friendly in their own front lawn with $250 worth of battery operated landscaping tools. This is a great prize for gardeners or anyone looking to get their hands and knees into their own little plot of land. Regardless of whether or not your thumb is already green, this is a prize that will make it greener.

This contest begins September 1, 2011. Voting begins October 15, 2011, after which the top ten user-ranked images advance to the Lenzr judges on October 25, 2011. The winning photograph will be announced November 1, 2011.

The Final Contest

The What’s in the Fridge? contest (with a prize of $500 worth of groceries courtesy of a printable coupons website) received 46 entries and 1699 votes. There were all kinds of wonderful images. Here at the office, we really liked the shot of the guy in the fridge drinking from the plastic jug. I personally thought that snapshot was brilliant and it was performance art because of the crazed expression on the guy’s face.

However the strangest thing happened… and it really threw us off balance when we had a three way tie between Lemon-aid, Chilling in the Fridge, and Eggclipse. And there’s nothing in the Lenzr Rules to determine the proper course of action in such a scenario.  And it was too late to go back to the original Lenzr Judges. (Rob made a mistake by not asking the Lenzr Judges to give a 2nd places)  so we improvised.

LemonAid by mich

This was a photo that most people had to look at twice to see what the heck is happening. From a Lenzr Judge: “Made me laugh. Double entendre. Very creative. This person went to a lot of trouble to get a laugh.”  And it made us laugh too.

Chilling in the Fridge by seattledredge

From a Lenzr Judge: “Great humour, good exposure, nifty product placements.” Which is a fascinating way to say that once again Seattle used the Lenzr canvas to tell us a story about herself and her vegetarian lifestyle or pro-biotic anyway.

And finally,

Eggclipse by silversurfer71

From a Lenzr Judge: “There is a certain sense of menace in this cleverly exposed shot. The ‘Jaws’ theme music right away starts to play in my mind.”  Haha yeah. We hear the Jaws theme too, followed by a giant crack!

It’s a Photo Finish!

What were we at Lenzr to do about a three-way tie? We couldn’t pick the winners ourselves, so after a bit of soul-searching, Rob Campbell he Prime Innovator of Lenzr, decided to take Lenzr to the streets. Luckily, our office is located in The Distillery District in Toronto–this postal code is overflowing with people making a living with artistic pursuits–and it only took about ten minutes for Rob to find the impressive panel of judges that he did!

Please click on the video below to see how we arrived at the winner of the What’s in the Fridge? contest. The judges, in order of appearance, are Gerry Williamson, children’s book illustrator, Rod Rennick, designer/sculptor at RPT Inc., and then finding Ian Willms, a local photographer was timely, and Philippe Souroujon of Pikto Studio were all gathered here in the lane beside Pikto in the Distillery.

Seattle Dredge wins the prize of $500 worth of free groceries courtesy of our friends at ClipDeals.

The onset of an immense storm can be a source of great inspiration to artists. Legendary Canadian painter Tom Thomson is reported to have furiously sketched the preliminary design of The West Wind as a formidable storm began to stretch over Lake Algonquin. Storm imagery is symbolic and powerful—primal, a force of nature itself and a reminder that we are survivors who have learned to co-exist with what the environment is capable of raining upon us. For the Weather the Storm contest, capture the essence of your land, your human condition and the effect Mother Nature’s fury has on both.

Storm chasers look to the skies!

Your wide shot should leave viewers in awe of Nature’s symphony. Show us rain storms, blizzards, wind and hail! Be sure to protect your camera—a simple way to do this is to place it in a Ziploc bag with a hole cut out for the lens.

Tough Roof is a perfect and permanent commercial roofing solution. It’s the last roof your building will ever need.

The Toughroof hot asphalt roof systems, headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, is an innovative product thats similar to a rubberized asphalt coating, but far more ingenious.  As seen on HGTV, Toughroof’s Build Up Roof Systems (BUR) use several layers of hot asphalt and reinforcing materials that combine to make the longest lasting commercial roofing system on the market today.

The Prize is a Sony Cyber-shot® H70  Digital Camera.

This camera has 10x (25mm wide) optical zoom lens, 16.1-megapixel, Sweep Panorama Mode, HD Movie mode (720p), 3.0″ LCD, iAuto mode, Optical SteadyShot™ image stabilization. It even has a cool motion detection feature.

The contest begins April 1, 2011. Voting begins May 15, 2011 and ends May 25, 2011, after which the Top Ten user-ranked photos advance to Judges. Winners announced June 1, 2011.

On Saturday March 13th 2010, The Wine Ladies, myself Rob Campbell, and Dave Dingle of Shrinkray,  hosted the winners of two Lenzr photo contests and together enjoyed a Locaboire wine tour of Prince Edward County, Ontario.

The winner of Macro Photos of Life, Bill Watson ve3bnw and his wife Debbie, joined the winner of Best Gourmet Food Sandra Ausma sausma1 and her companion Johnny Cochrane.

Locaboire Wine Tour of Prince Edward Co.

The wines of Prince Edward Co have gained prominence over the last decade, which is remarkable considering most of the vineyards in the area didn’t exist fifteen years ago. This is still a very young wine region, but the idea is maturing as viticulturists are now producing excellent products.

Partly because of its soft and friable calcareous limestone soil, and partly due to assiduous care on the part of its winemakers who have learned how to protect their vines each winter to shelter the tender primary buds from killing cold, the vines have endured and excelled in tastings all over the world.

We all met up at The Timberhouse

Lenzr attracts an interesting mix of people, and our assembly was a terrific cross section of contest participants and colourful sponsors; there was great chemistry right from the beginning.

Everyone was surprised to find a stretch limousine waiting for us outside the  Timberhouse Resort in Brighton Ontario.  Some local vintages were waiting inside, with more down the road. The wine started flowing from the moment we all climbed aboard.

From left to right, Rob Campbell, Dave Dingle, Michell Walkau, Susanne and Georgia – The Wine Ladies, Debbie (MommaKoala), Johnny Cochrane and Dr. Sandra Ausma at The Grange Winery – that’s Caroline Granger pouring Trumpours Mill, 2007 Pinot Noir. Photos by Bill Watson (Ve3bnw) check ve3bnw Flickr stream for more pics.

The Locaboire Wine Tour started at The Grange

The prize winners enjoyed a short (hot) drive in a long limousine through the brown landscape of Prince Edward County in Eastern Ontario, and past some very old properties with dilapidated barns and overgrown stone fences. i though I saw some wild apple trees – all that remains of the orchards that were planted on every farm in the area in the early 1800s. This region boasts some of the oldest settlements in Ontario and the wineries people are quite connected to their history.

This is a blossoming wine country in the springtime of its existence and our tour visited three of the twenty wineries that are here now; ten more vineyards have planted grapes and hope to establish themselves in the near future.

Ten minutes into the expedition our limousine turned off the paved road and gingerly traversed down a muddy sideroad, over Dorland Creek, and past a 19th century  farmhouse to stop outside The Grange winery.

Inside a cozy wooden barn we met Caroline Granger who, along with her father Bob Granger, owns the property and facilities.   This family manages six different vineyards, with six different varietals – they harvest 180 tonnes of grapes every year.

Caroline was great and The Wine Ladies really liked her – Susanne and Georgia unpacked their signature oversized wine glasses, and we shot three segments for The Wine Ladies TV show in three different locations on the property.

Caroline was very down to earth as she related the history of her property – the farm is 200 years old and was once the location of a chicken canning business which packed under the label Meadowvale farms.  The chicken cannery was quite succesful in the early 1900s and printed material still exists that show the goods were sold in the market of the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto.  Caroline Granger was born and raised on the property, she described how she plowed the fields when she was a little girl and  The Wine Ladies in particular were very impressed with her – they remarked afterward how genuine it is for the proprietor of a winery to be so well connected to the climate and soil, the terrior of the region.

Next Stop, Closson Chase – 629 Closson Rd, Hillier Ontario

At 3:30 pm the Locaboire wine tour continued down the road to Closson Chase.

Its no secret, these vineyards was founded by and are still owned and managed by a smattering of Canadian film and television celebrities, most notably Sonia Smits. The first test plots were planted in 1998 and the winery itself was founded in 1999.

This destination was a perfect exercise in serious wine tasting as Lynn Carmichael explained that Closson has two properties. The grape vines on their farm in Niagara are 30 years old, while the vines grown here in Eastern Ontario come from vines that are less than six years old. We tasted the difference as we sampled the Chardonnay – one glass was from 6 yr old vines, and other from 30 yr old vines. We savoured the contrast, and came to understand more about the structure of wine in general. It was a good education, and great exercise.

All of the wine we consumed on the Locaboire tour was of course Estate Bottled which means the wine was produced from grapes grown on the farm, or by the estate.

Locaboire Wine Tour ends at RoseHall Run

The final destination on our Locaboire wine tour was Rosehall Run at 1241 Greer Rd Wellington Ontario where we met Dan Sullivan who is both the winemaker and vineyard manager. He is a lifetime student of the art of making good wine (in large batches) and has been honing his craft for almost fifteen years. This guy is super passionate about his life’s work and very hands on, eager to discuss the smallest details of his craft. At one point he stood over a pump and explained how the mechanism could move whole grapes to the press without breaking or bruising the fruit. He also lectured on the experience of setting up the winery itself, and the geology of the soil as evidenced in the barrel cellar, which was hewn out of the same limestone that makes the grapes so delicious.

This walk about Rosehall Run got most interesting down in the barrel cellar where Dan did a great interview with The Wine Ladies. The group tasted several different wines , including 2008 Sullyzwicker rose and red, and a syrah that was made from grapes grown on a neighbour’s property, Steven Singer the viticuluralist of nearby Fieldstone.

The Timberhouse

That evening, at the Timberhouse we tucked into an incredible feast accompanied by the wines we enjoyed throughout the day. The chef prepared a feast fit for visiting monarchs, and indeed that’s certainly how we felt about ourselves at that time.

The Dinner Menu at The Timberhouse

First a small bowl of sautéed shrimp in Tai sauce garnished with diced pepers and strawberries on a tuft of vermicelli laying on a big piece of Swiss Chard.

Second course was a crisp  salad of assorted greens, with tomato wedges and cucumbers smothered in raspberry vinagrette

Third course and entree featured bacon wrapped Fillet Mignon in a herb compound butter with rosemary roasted potatoes an fresh vegetables.

All this was followed by a delicious homemade chocolate cake for desert.

The wines we drank at dinner include,

Rosehall Run 2007 VQA Pinot Noir
Rosehall Run 2007 Riesling
Rosehall Run 2007 Cabernet Franc
Rosehall Run 2007 Gewurztraminer
The Grange of Prince Edward Vineyards 2008 Trumpour’s Mill Gamay Noir
Closson Chase 2007 Chardonnay VQA Prince Edward County
Redtail Vineyard 2007 Pinot Gris
Redtail Vineyard 2007 Pinot Noir
Huff Estates 2008 VQA Riesling Off-Dry

This amazing woman is the Contest Queen, a very active contest participant and promoter with over twenty years experience and wisdom to share. She’s also a prolific author and thinker and a very informative and entertaining blogger.  Add it all up and Carolyn is a profoundly original web marketer that would probably like to be considered North America’s Contest Queen, and indeed that’s exactly what she’s becoming…

You can read all about Carolyn Wilman, the Contest Queen on Canada Blog Friends which has just recently profiled her and published her vision of the future. The author has once again gone to great lengths to get all the subject URLS in order, and link to all platforms and properties in Carolyn’s royal realm.

Buy her book You Can’t Win If You Don’t Enter to read all her secrets.

Lenzr.com is just starting to get its web legs, and now there are widgets available for blog users. This is great way to join the Lenzr community and become part of a synergistic art movement. Check out the widgets here.

This bean sprout website germ-of-an-idea manifest online has just pushed its head up above the night soil.

In the summer of 2009, this junior contest website is starting to get some attention, and twenty one days after launch their were over 100 registered users, 120 different photos and almost 5000 total votes. There are now unusual alliances forming and new production rituals appearing as knowledge is gathered on all eleven sides of this uncut diamond.

THE BLOG WIDGETS

The Lenzr Blog Widget is now available in three basic layouts (vertical 100x or 200x or horizontal 300x) for all bloggers that want to get more involved in Lenzr’s creative community; the bean stalk is just beginning to stretch out its hairy tentacles.

The Lenzr Blog Widget cycles through all three contests, showing the top three most popular images in each match, one contest at a time – each event gets two seconds with a half second fade. Should it be longer? NOTE: The blog widget that’s currently available is just the beginning of what’s possible. Today there’s only two layouts, vertical and horizontal, but tomorrow there will be many more customizable features. For example, right now the script is programmed to load the most popular images, the three most thumbed up pictures in each contest. The mechanism ignores the thumbs down quotient and that could be changed – the feed could someday select and display the worst, most unpopular images. Or maybe it could be programmed to show only the images that member has uploaded? Or perhaps only the images they like?