We are thrilled and amazed with the response to our colourful cover contest - we received over 1400 talented entries and we can't wait to share the winning image with you! It's certainly a difficult job choosing, Bex is currently viewing every single one!
In the meantime, it's now time to submit your entries to fill our other pages! ;)
We usually give a list of categories, we know you love a clue on where to start with submitting your work so we've created this post to help you. Colour is SUCH a broad theme and we don't just want a massive pool of any images that just "aren't black & white" so we do have some guidance for you below, based on what we saw in the cover entries with some examples.
Top tip: If you entered our cover contest, we have already picked out a few (*cough* 238) entries we might like to publish in the magazine so there's no need to submit the same ones again.
What we'd love to see:
Colourful Skies
We LOVE the colourful skies we've seen so far, show us how many colours you've captured above us!
Block Colour
Show us your images with one overriding colour that fills the frame (or most of it) - we'd love to see the entire spectrum from red to violet and all the colours in between but only one colour per image like the examples in Bex's collage.
Remember any genre goes, whether it's family, nature, landscape, macro, still life, weddings, food...
Multi-coloured
From rainbows to a general mish mash of colours, shows us an explosion of colour!
Muted
Not all colours have to be vibrant and bright to be beautiful. Show us your gorgeous muted tones.
Pop of colour
I do hate that overused phrase but I don't know how else to describe it succinctly! The opposite of our frame filling block colour images, just a little splash of one colour.
Articles
We're on the hunt for some articles too of course! We'd love to receive some colourful "How To" tutorials, stories and projects about colours you love, perhaps your thoughts on colour theory, how you use colour to convey emotions or what draws you to certain colours in your work, how you use colour in your home to create a certain colour scheme in your work perhaps...
Plus we'd be thrilled if "TDL 8 Ideas" could become a regular interactive series where you can share your images inspired by the article with us on Instagram using #TDL8ideas. So if you have 8 ideas on how to capture colour or perhaps how to introduce colour into your work or something similar, pop that in your submission too!
What we don't want...
Rainbow windows
As fabulous as these are, we've done this in our Quarantine edition and want to avoid repeating previous issues with anything too similar.
Anything we've published before
For the same reasons above, if your image was published in one of our previous editions, we won't print the same one again but definitely send us some more of your work, even things you have previously submitted are fine as long as they weren't selected before.
If we've published you on our website that's fine too, we just don't want anything repeating in the magazine.
Black & white
As much as we love a good black and white image, this is our colour edition. Colour photos only please.
CATEGORIES
We've created a simple list to help organise things this time so please name your images according to colour as detailed below.
While we don't have set categories for this edition as yet, we will still be having our regular "Details" and "Light Relief" galleries so make sure you send us some colourful funnies and details too.
Hint: the funny gallery (Light Relief) always receives a smaller number of submissions so sending us anything which makes us giggle also gives you a greater chance of getting published ;)
NAMING
Don't forget to rename and resize your images - this is SO important for many reasons. If your images aren't named correctly they won't be sorted into the galleries for selection.
For the purposes of our automatic sorting please name your files according to the following categories:
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple
Pink
Multi
Details
Light Relief (funnies)
For example:
Red_YourName_01
Orange_YourName_01
Yellow_YourName_01
LightRelief_YourName_01 etc....
Hint: If you're not sure which category it belongs in - take a guess and pick one, e.g. if your photo is mostly yellow with some orange - put it in the Yellow category. If it has red blue and yellow, put it in Multi. If it's teal or aqua - pick Green or Blue depending on which you think it matches best.
SIZING
Don't forget to resize your images to 1000 pixels along the longest edge to keep file sizes down until we select final images.
We realise the quality may be reduced and will not judge based on this. If however your image is selected and we find quality issues in the high resolution file you send us, we may have to reconsider using it so please check you have high quality files available for printing.
The submission form includes important information with tick boxes including our T&Cs for submissions. Please ensure you have read these fully before submitting to avoid wasting your and our time.
If your submission via the form is successful, you will be taken to a success page and will receive a confirmation email. You can find the form here: www.thisdetailedlife.com/submit
Our form can occasionally be a bit temperamental (can't we all!) and some people had issues submitting it last time - particularly close to the deadline when our site traffic was high with a large volume of last minute submissions. Please bear this in mind and send us your work early to avoid any problems but if you do encounter issues using our form, you can email entries to thisdetailedlife@gmail.com. If your image is chosen via email, we will ask you to resubmit the form at a later date as we do need the permissions signed prior to printing.
You have until 3rd March 2021 to submit your images.
Good luck!!!