Season 4 Photo Contest is finally complete. The book has gone to the press. The judges all got their votes in and while we had way too many great images all three judges only had 4 images that they all three agreed upon. When the book went to press, this image by Anna Hennings won our grand prize, a free stay at Playa Viva.  So many great photos didn’t even make it into “the book.”  We thank you all for your submissions and thank our three photographer/editor judges: Jay Premack, Amanda Holmes y Bryce Lankard for their time and energies as judges.  Thank you and come visit us in Season 5.

So, how did we decide on which photos to include, first a photography had to have at least two votes to be included in the book. with over 500 photos submitted many had just one vote, but only a total of 37 images had two votes and 8 had three votes. The final selection of the winning photograph out of the top 8 photos came down to a very simple editorial process. Which of these photos looked best on the cover of the book and which embodied the themes of this years entries.  The themes that permeated the winning photos were fun/whimsy/sense of humor along with nature/peace/joy. The cover photo by Anna Hennings contained all these great qualities of the simple joy that we all share in heading out to the shore with a bucket full of baby turtles to release. Congratulations to Anna and thank you to all of you who submitted so many great photographs.