Photography "GURU"

For over a year, I have been submitting photos to the “Gurushots” Photography Challenges. It seems that I started on the challenge in the system’s infancy. In that time, the number of submissions have skyrocketed and the number of my achievements have tapered off. That says that I hit most of the requirements early in the history of the challenges.

When I started the challenges, I was not so much interested as “winning” by submitting my best photos. Instead I tried to submit the 4 (usually – some challenges had other requirements) photos that highlight the breadth of my skills for each of the challenges.

There are about 900 photos that I have saved/archived on my web site. Most are not view-able by on the web site. While selecting photos for the challenges, I ended up participating 160 challenges. For each challenge, my entree collections started hitting the “Popular”, “Skilled”, “Premier”, “Elite” and “All-Star” levels. Others participating in the challenges vote for the better photos. There were 3 winners in each of the challenges – Most Votes, Best Collection, and Guru’s Pick. Participants started as “Newbie”. Progressed to “Rookie”, “Challenger”, “Advanced”, “Veteran”, “Expert”, “Champion”, “Master”, and finally “Guru”.

Here are the requirements for achieving “Guru” status:

GuruShots Points – 150,000

Achieve “All-Star” level - 30 collections

Win the challenge – 1

Selected as “Guru Pick” - 5

As a “Guru” I will be able to create challenges. Not sure that I will do that. When I won the “RAW” Challenge, I was sent at camera trigger for smart phones.

It has been an interesting exercise. I looked at and judged thousands of photos. There were a lot of photos submitted, many are good, few are awesome, and some were not worth posting. Each time my collections hit the “All-Star” level, I posted my entrees on my photography blog.

I am not sure that I would take advantage on the opportunity to run a challenge. I am happy that I achieved “GURU” status. Think its time to spent the time in writing my memoirs and updating my web sites.