Tag Archives: Christmas

Announcing the Best of the North Holiday Display Photo Contest


You could win a Pizza Party for 10 of your employees or friends with the

Best of the North (Northern Michigan) Holiday Display!

We love our northern Michigan home, don’t you?  To showcase and encourage folks to shop locally and find out what’s new and fun in our winter wonderland, PhotoScramble is sponsoring this interactive contest.

Diversion Hats on Front St. decorated with this cool santa dude

We will be looking for the best business displays depicting the holiday spirit. So break out the lights, add some more tinsel and show us your holiday cheer!

What a Business gets: Business benefit from exposure as their photo, location, and business type will be on PhotoScramble . Best of all, they can create customer interaction by asking  their customers to vote for their business display. Customers can vote and share their Best of the North picture on Facebook, MySpace, email or it can be added into any blog post. Pictures are easily sharable so that each business that is in the contest will benefit from Social Media interaction and drive a bit of customer loyalty by allowing customers to have a voice in the contest. The most votes WINS!

This FREE contest is open for valid northern Michigan business only. Our staff photographers will be looking for the best holiday displays; or feel free to submit your business photograph to:

http://www.photoscramble.com/ContestDetail.aspx?ContestId=76

The new Simply Cupcakes on Front street looks so yummy!
The new Simply Cupcakes on Front street looks so yummy!

What a business WINS:

First Place Prize: A Pizza Party from Pangea’s Pizza for 10 of your employee’s or friends! Includes three (3) large pizzas of your choice, salad, dessert and soda.  Free delivery in Traverse City MI (Pangea’s reserve the right to limit delivery location) Valid 1.10.2011-1.10.2012. (Pangea’s Pizza on Front Street in Traverse City)

PLUS! The winner will be presented with a framed certificate naming their business the 2010 Winner of the Best of the North Holiday Display!

Winners will be announced January 10th, 2011.

Also, we would like to give a big Thank you to our friends at Pangea’s Pizza & Pub for donating a large portion of the Pizza Party to the winner!

Pangea’s Pizza 135 East Front Street  Traverse City, MI.

Our pick of 6 tips for great Holiday photography!

Snow! Oh man, the holidays will be here before we know it.  Soon we will be seeing all kinds of holiday pictures. Capturing the beautiful outdoor light displays can be a challenge, so we want to share our pick of  6  great tips.

  1. Make sure you have turned your cameras built in flash off. Nothing will spoil a great shot faster than having the flash wash the lights out completely.
  2. A natural reflective foreground can add a great touch to your photographs. Think snow, ice, or water.
  3. Don’t wait until it is pitch dark to take your picture! If you wait until it’s completely dark you have a choice of exposing for the brightly lit displays and have the background badly underexposed or to expose for the background and have the lit displays badly overexposed. There’s no happy medium to find after darkness has fallen. The ideal time to make great outdoor holiday light pictures is at twilight. So the ideal time is when there’s a 2 or 3 EV (Exposure Values) difference between the holiday lights and the surrounding scene.
  4. Use a good, sturdy tripod to support your camera because your exposure times will be too long for hand held shots.
  5. Shooting at an upward angle will help make for a dynamic shot because you will be capturing the afterglow of the evening sky.
  6. Once you have your picture framed just the way you want it, access your camera’s WB (White Balance) menu and set the WB for tungsten. All the Christmas lights have a color temperature of approximately 2900°K, the color temperature of a 100W incandescent (Tungsten Filament) bulb.
example of great holiday lights!
tis the Season for Holiday Pictures!