Baby competitions - love 'em or hate 'em????

[nik76]

Took DD to have her phot taken yesterday for the local paper baby comp - bit of fun and excuse to;
a) get her dressed up in a pretty dress
b) for me to go into town as haven't ventured there yet
c) get a nice professioal photo as ahven't had one done yet

Called my mum to have a chat and mentioned what was doing and her and dad were not impressed to say the least.

So what do you think??????

I think they are great (i would as that was my job before i gave up work).
Why are your Mum and Dad unimpressed?It's not as if you are going to be devestated if your lo doesn't win is it?
It's just a harmless bit of fun and the best way for photographers to make money.....bet you will come away having bought some portraits.
Good luck!

it's just an excuse to sell portraits; no harm in that as long as they don't persuade you to part with loadsamoney.

Why would your parents think it wrong?

Dunno I was a little suprised - got to go on Tuesday to view the pics and pick which one is going to be entered - am expecting the hard sell!!!

If the photos are that good they shouldn't need 'hard selling'.

Not so much hard sell, but they do try to get you to buy loads and loads - do you really need 5 different poses in 4 different sizes each???

Much better to have one photo which you love, and have another portrait done in a few months - babies change so fast!

Had a look the packeahe are all at £65 and £75 - for the £75 one you get the CD and full re-print rights.

I think they are fine if you are going just to get the pictures and not hoping to win.
I know someone who works for our local paper,and the winner of last years comp had over 600 votes,you had to buy a copy of the paper to vote so family and friends must be willing to buy a huge amount of papers .
They dont even look at the beautiful pictures,if I entered my cat and bought 5,000 voting slips,he would win.

As i mentioned i was a photographer who worked for a very well known photography company who regually run baby comps and i can say hand on heart they were judged properly-never by phone in votes as that is surely just a popularity contest.
I agree that not all companys are run with the same high standards and morals regarding judging.

Sorry nobodys fool,
I know photographers run properly organised baby competions,but our local paper runs a competion each year,every picture is shown in the paper,and winners are decided by reader votes, coupon in paper, 1 vote per coupon,no copies.
I would love to see the sales figures for that month

I've entered Tink in two this year, the local paper one and the Prima one. Mainly for the photos because they are popularity contests. I'm disappointed I couldn't get her into the Baby Show one cause I think she will have done well with it.

Prima have a big problem with cheating on their competition. It's supposed to be one vote per day per PC, but it's done on cookies rather than IP address and last year someone wrote a macro to enter 1,000's of votes a day. Even after people complained Prima refused to do anything about it, apparently (they told me this year) they did deal with it in the end. I'm not bothering to vote this time, I got three nice (free) pics of her from it.

We bought two packages from the local paper, costing £100 in total. It worked out nicely that everyone got a copy and we got a huge one. Go with the CD option, it is well worth the money and usually they cost a lot more than that.

Its done with phone votes - gues I can't rely on mum and dad!!! haha

Am going tomorrow to see the pics, can't wait.