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| 2018 Calendar Cover Photo (by Joshua Wolfsun) |
The response to our call for photos has been growing each year, and it's a thrill to open each email and be treated to such a wealth of beautiful local scenes. We've been told more than once that each year's calendar is even more exquisite than the last!
Although we receive plenty of really imaginative and beautiful submissions, for a variety of reasons many are not quite right for this calendar. So as you are considering what photos to submit, please keep these pointers in mind:
- Photos must show Western Massachusetts, with special consideration given to photos of Amherst and the Pioneer Valley. Before 2020, we limited photos to Amherst, but we have expanded the geographic range - in 2023, half of our photos were of Amherst locations, with the rest capturing other scenes in Western Mass. So your odds of getting selected will probably be better if you submit a photo taken in Amherst or "of" Amherst. After that, strong preference will be given this year for photos of Kestral Trust land, as well as photos taken of Pioneer Valley locations. But we will go outside of the Pioneer Valley - as long as you stay in Western Massachusetts - for a really extraordinary photo.
- Featured photos capture the progression of the seasons. Our April and May calendar photos will be more springlike, while October will be a fall scene. Thus, among all the fall foliage photos we receive each year, we will pick two or three for the calendar. We tend to receive fewer quality winter and spring shots than any other season. So feel free to submit multiple photos, but your odds of being selected increase if you submit a variety of seasons.
- Diversity of scenes. We have no idea why, but in one year we received more Mount Pollux photos than anything else. We did pick one for the calendar, but about a dozen excellent shots were rejected. We like to show different aspects of the local area, and we won't include a Mount Pollux photo every year. Check out our calendars from past years, and consider ways to vary the subject. 2023 Calendar 2021 Calendar 2020 Calendar 2019 Calendar 2018 Calendar 2017 Calendar 2016 Calendar 2015 Calendar 2014 Calendar
- Landscape orientation. Due to the layout of the calendar, your photo submissions should be in landscape orientation (photo is wider than it is tall). Photos in portrait orientation (photo is taller than it is wide) will not be considered.
- Main subject should be the place. People and pets in the photo are fine as long as the photo isn't all about the people or pets (we're not looking for portraits or close ups of groups of people, in other words) - the main subject needs to be the setting around the people or pets. Crowd shots - where groups of people are the focus of the shot - are also not appropriate.
- Avoid extreme close-ups. While close-ups can be beautiful, they don't necessarily convey a sense of place. For example, a photo of a lilac branch taken at Lilacland doesn't say "Amherst" (it could have been taken anywhere). Better to pull back on that shot to show, for example, lilac bushes blooming against the hill and art gallery beyond. And that said, we've been known to break this rule for an extraordinary photo!
- Weather, clouds, and iconic landmarks are a plus. Even though we are "in the clouds," we do not require all the featured photos to have clouds - and, ideally the photo won't just be clouds. But we do like good cloud shots, as well as pictures showing weather. We also love local landmarks captured in a unique way. Our cover photo in 2018 (shown above) featured all three - in addition to being a beautiful photo, it showed a local landmark (the Amherst Common), along with clouds and snow on the ground. This photo fit just about every criteria. It also evoked a true winter feel and captured a familiar location in a way people rarely see unless they are up early in the morning.
- Go easy on Photoshop. As you will see when you look through past featured photos, we strongly prefer realistic renderings of nature. By all means, use photo-editing to get the best out of your shot, but please stop before you turn an otherwise good photo into a super-saturated, surreal, color-soaked extra-terrestrial planet. In general, less is more when it comes to color adjusting, exposure, contrast, and saturation. We do know that some phone cameras colorize photos automatically - if that's the case, we can help you undo what's been done. An example of what we mean here can be seen in the three shots, below. For the 2017 calendar, several people submitted their photo of the evening sky taken on July 4, 2016. Although we generally prefer photos of recognizable places and not just the sky, in this case we made an exception because so many people had seen and photographed that particular evening sky over Amherst while waiting for the fireworks show - and also because it was simply an extraordinary sky. Several people on our selection committee, having also photographed that same sky, remembered it well. Among the many submitted photos of that scene, we ultimately selected the photo that showed the sky closest to the real thing - that would be the first photo below. As the sun set, the sky did shade more towards pink/orange (as shown in the second photo, which I took that evening), but the sky never reached the extreme colors shown in the third photo, which was ultimately rejected for the calendar. That last over-saturated photo, while colorful, delivered a sky that was too obviously doctored.
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| Featured photo in the July 2017 HITCA Wall Calendar, taken 7/4/2016 |
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| Right before nightfall, the same sky shaded a deeper pink/orange by Sharon Vardatira (unedited), taken 7/4/2016 |
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| Same night sky (over-saturated) |
In general, every featured photo will have viewers seeing and feeling our local area in the photos. It's not necessary that the places featured be recognizable, but the photos should convey a feel for Amherst and Western Massachusetts, the nature around us, the sky, and, yes, sometimes those locations anyone passing through might recognize or feel drawn to visit. One of the greatest compliments we get is when former residents tell us this calendar makes them feel like they are home again.
