Photo Assignment Contest Update

The other day I mentioned that my friend Julien was entered in the Name Your Dream Assignment photo competition. I included the widget to the left, but I wanted to take a chance to promote his idea once again since it's a cool one. Plus, he set up a great-looking blog related to his entry, and you can check it out by following this link. It looks so good, in fact, that I'm afraid it may be an indicator that his job search isn't going so well...

In any case, I also thought I'd include an excerpt from his entry idea, to get your brain juices flowing:

Julien's Entry:

"This photo-journey will be driven by a group of friends who purchase one or two Soviet Jeeps in the Republic of Georgia, and take several months to drive from Tbilisi to southern France. Hilarity, Knowledge, and Beauty Ensues.

My wife and I spent 16 months as Peace Corps Volunteers in the Republic of Georgia. During our time there we noticed - and I fell in love with - the rusty remains of the Soviet army which served as common transport for Georgians, namely Jeeps known by their brand; UAZ.

The idea for this Photo Journey derives from Georgia's fervent desire to be European, and we hope to photograph the beautiful and interesting seams that exist between Asia and Europe. We would like to drive from the old forgotten capital of Georgia, Tbilisi, and snake our way (with breakdowns expected) through the Caucasus, Turkey, Istanbul, Greece, Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Slovenia, the Italian Alps, France, and ending in the village of Le Cleuzel, in southern France.

This journey will provide us with images of beautiful landscapes, ruins, old factories, portraits, urban and rural life, music, and culture of people and nations which dot our 2,500 mile path.

Each member of this team will have their own cultural or photographic focus, and will post their experiences and findings on a website; complete with Google Earth positioning and photo posts. An example of this may be my fascination with traditional spirits found along our journey. Photos and interviews with traditional makers of the extremely potent drinks known from East to West as Cha-Cha, Raki, Ouzo, Slivovice, Grappa, and Eau-de-Vie will add interest and color to our project."

Now, not to be outdone, and in the spirit of fairness (and awesomeness), my brother Paul also created his own entry in the contest. It's called "Screw Space; Let's Explore Earth!" The mere concept is pretty great, and he also got my vote (after you register on the site, you can vote once for as many projects as you want). Paul was initially reluctant to have his entry promoted, mainly cause he didn't want to try to take any of the Sitzblog steam out of Julien's sails. What a good sport. So, I told him that I'd try to promote both entries. Plus, I now have two chances that a winning entry might take me along for the ride. A synopsis of Paul's idea appears below, and there's a widget on the left that will take you to his page on the contest site:

Paul's Entry:

"Every year, thousands of new species are discovered on Earth. It seems we've hardly scratched the surface! My idea is to go to all of the untapped regions of Earth to see what else we might be missing.

Earthlings, and more specifically Americans, seem to have a fascination with outer space, and why shouldn't we? It's plenty interesting, and there's plenty of it out there, but 99.999999% of it will likely be out of human reach for centuries to come. My question is, why are we getting ahead of ourselves, trying to get off of this planet, when we haven't even seen everything Earth has to offer.

Each year, hundreds or thousands of new species are discovered on Earth, ranging from the "how the hell haven't we seen this before" creatures to the "well no wonder, it's smaller than a flea" insects, but each new discovery can bring wonderful new beauty to life.

My journey would be centered mainly on Borneo, one of the liveliest places on Earth, and largely untapped as far as exploration goes, then continuing on to some of the most remote places on Earth, such as the Amazon rainforest and the Mekong region of Asia which includes Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. Then, if I have any money left over (which I should since I'm a college student and know how to stretch a dollar), then I'll work on the oceans.

According to the National Ocean Service, less than 5% of the oceans have been explored. INCONCEIVABLE! Water is a crucial part of our ecosystem, but it looks as though we hardly know anything about all that blue stuff that covers close to three-quarters of our planet. In the same manner as before, I would set out to find as many new species as I could.

There's a lot of beauty in the world, but in our everyday lives we can tend to overlook what an amazing little rock we have to stand on. And who knows, maybe the best is yet to come!"

Either way you vote, these are two pretty cool ideas, if you ask me, so I'd encourage you to head to the site. It's really not hard at all to register, and it could help a buddy or a brother of mine catch a shooting star.

Good luck to them both!

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