The Mystery of the BA Highlife Travel Photography competition

ffotogirl

I really wasn't sure where to post this so I hope I've made the right decision!

I was just wondering if anyone here had entered the British Airways Highlife Travel Photography competition and heard anything back since it ended? The competition was advertised on their website and inflight magazine and ran in four heats over the past year. During each heat you could upload one image to an online gallery and people could log in and vote for you. There were two winners for each heat; a readers choice for whoever amassed the most votes and a judges choice. The prizes were Nikon DSLR cameras for each heat and at the end there was supposed to be an ultimate winner, by decision of the judges, who would win the opportunity to go on a travel photography assignment with a British Airways photographer in North America.

I entered a couple of the heats and emailed them once or twice to ask questions and they always got back to me promptly. I didn't win any of the heats but amassed a really strong number of votes, and was on the first page of the gallery each time. Most people on the first page had a couple of hundred votes. In the last heat things got a bit weird and loads of really really bad photos were entered into the gallery and started amassing scores into the tens of thousands! I know photography is subjective but honestly, these were all so shockingly bad and had such a fantastic number of votes in comparison to everyone else it looked like someone was trying to scam the competition.

At the end of the final heat in October the whole gallery & all the competition info disappeared from the website! No announcement of the heat winners and no mention of the grand prize. This was quite disappointing as after every other round you were at least able to view the galleries and see the pictures that had done well. Previously the winners had been announced quite quickly but there was nothing online by the 5th of November so I emailed to ask when they'd be up. I was a little bit excited to find out but also wanted to know because I'd been blogging about it (I run a photography blog on my website) and encouraging other people to submit images and vote and wanted to keep them updated. They replied on the 9th of November and said the judges were still making their decision and results would be updated on the site when it had been decided.

Well it's now 6th January and there's no sign of any update and they haven't replied to my latest email. It's all very mysterious. Anyone have any clues?

therealuglyduckling

I was a winner of one of the heats. (My winning picture was selected by the judging panel and not by the viewers.) I received my prize on time and my photograph was published in the Highlife Magazine. In corresponding with them, I also made comment regarding the ludicrous number of votes that had been amassed by really ordinary photographs. (Presumably some scammers had hacked into the site - I can't think of any other explanation) BA made no response to my comments on this aspect.

I am still awaiting the announcement of the overall winners. (According to the rules - one of the 4 winning 'viewers votes' pictures - or in my view the most hacked votes pictures - wins a trip to North America on a photo shoot with a BA Travel Photographer) I have been communicating with them for several months, albeit with much delay in responding on their part, and they say the final judging has been delayed due to difficulties in contacting their photographer judges who are 'scattered throughout the world'. The latest date they indicated for the announcement has now passed over a fortnight ago.

I think you have a legitimate concern and I would bypass BA Highlife and go to someone in an executive position in BA itself.