Wired recently held a self-portrait contest. Readers rated the photos and the top 10 were published online. I’m not big on the winning portrait, but I thought the 10th one was brilliant and should have placed higher. Oh, well. (link via Photography Voter)

Some random photography-related links to enjoy:

• Wikipedia’s featured picture for today is kinda creepy to me — I’m not a fan of bugs that can hurt me — but nonetheless an amazing shot.
• A book about Kent Rogowski’s “Bears” photography exhibit in New York last year is now available. (That’s “Bears” as in teddy bears, not the hairy gay male variety.) The bears shot in the exhibit were cut open, turned inside out, and restuffed. The results are eerie and endearing.
• File Magazine in cooperation with Coudal Partners and Flak Photo is holding a film photography contest. The contest is in two stages and stage one submissions are due Sunday. Had I learned about this sooner I’d totally take part, but with my weekend schedule there’s no way I can complete stage one in time.

Oh, and I did mention DCist Exposed some time ago, right?

About a couple of weeks ago, I posted a photo here I called “Pride Bunting.” A couple of days later, the moderator of the Challenges and Comments flickr group invited me to submit my photo to their Fences challenge.

I found out today that my photo took first place, and that just makes my day, especially since I didn’t take the photo with my “good” camera.

Behold the Winning Pumpkin, by flickrite Fredosan

My office building decided to hold its first annual pumpkin carving contest last week. Each company or organization in the building was allowed to enter one pumpkin.

Internally, our office held a mini-contest to determine which pumpkin would go into the building-wide competition. There were about 8 or 9 entries, and my department’s entry — the Pumpkin Burger — won.

Everything in our entry was edible, too… in theory, at least.