The suspense is already driving me nuts!

Okay, a couple months ago, Andrew reminded me that New Mexico Magazine holds an annual photo contest for amateur photographers. Any photos entered, by the way, must have been taken in The Land of Enchantment.

He then casually mentioned that I took a few really cool looking photos while we lived in New Mexico, that I should consider submitting them.

Hmmm. Yes, I had to agree that I thought they were cool, and obviously, he thought they were cool. By the way, if you scroll up to the top of the blog, you'll see the photo that inspired him to encourage me to enter the contest.

So I found the contest rules, and went to work going through all my New Mexico photos (hundreds of them), to see if there were any that even remotely stood a chance among other more talented, more experienced photographers' entries.

Well, after a lot of deliberation, I decided that the storm-clouds over the Sacramento Mountains (seen above) would be one entry (of the 6 possible entries I was allowed).

I had another photo that I thought was awesome . . . I took it at White Sands National Monument one brilliant February afternoon. It's a landscape photo, the "subject" being a snow-white, rippled sand dune against an amazingly vivid blue sky. That was photo #2.

Then one more of the Sacramento Mountains on a somewhat snowy winter afternoon, with the beautiful, late afternoon's golden light turning everything rusty.

Plus one of more storm clouds . . . just the storm clouds with the brilliant blue sky (again) as a background.

And finally photo #5 was of the St. Francis Cathedral in Santa Fe.

(That's right, I only chose 5, though I was allowed to send up to 6.)

I followed the instructions in the rules, then sent off the photos and CD with the digital copies to the photo contest address in Santa Fe.

Now all I can do is wait. And wait . . . and wait.

The contest deadline was just a couple days ago, September 27th.

Winners will be announced in early December, according to the rules, with prizes being shipped in late December. In addition to prizes offered for "Grand Prize," "First Prize," "Second Prize," "Third Prize," and "Honorable Mention," the winners' photos will be published in the January 2011 issue of New Mexico Magazine.

So, while I have a feeling that I won't be winning the Grand Prize (or maybe not even 1st, 2nd, or 3rd), I'm hoping that I'll at least get an honorable mention. Of course, it would be AWESOME if I won a category, and I picked what I thought were my best photos, because I want to win.

I'm just starting to doubt my ability because it's been a long time since I've taken any photography classes (the last one being one of Mr. Duff's classes while I was a student at Culver); it's also been a long time since I was a part of the Culver photography club, trying to take artsy photos. I'm a little intimidated because the judges are professional photographers/artists.

Come to think of it, the last time I entered a photo contest was while I was at Culver. I submitted a black and white photo of the Riding Hall, at an angle very similar to this:

Fog-enveloped Riding Hall at Culver Academies, circa 1987

Of course, the photo I submitted was taken one very sunny morning, so there was a lot of contrast between light/dark, with cool shadows.

Anyway, I guess I'm just going nuts from the suspense and having to wait forever (okay, just a couple months) for the results. I just really wanna know if I won something.