The contest was a real challenge with new experience and opportunity for all international participants. We receive a letter from our Spanish colleagues in which they tell us about their work, first results and emotions during May.
«I have been involved in four editions of Wiki Loves events. After monuments and public art, Wiki Loves Earth was a new challenge with new partners, new audience and new targets to develop on Wikipedia. In summary, I love it and really worth it. I am still amazed by the results.
There are motivated Wikipedians who like to complete with photos almost anything you propose. There is also a large community of Flickr users that do not edit Wikipedia but they are eager to help with their expertise on photography. But it is amazing that after four years of annual photo competitions, 60% of the participants are new users. This is an important outreach goal.
A nice story of an unknown participant sums up the spirit of Wiki Loves Earth. After a month of competition, the last day a new participant registered his or her account and uploaded wonderful pictures. What surprised me most is that he only uploaded photos of sites that had no images after a month of competition. Althougt Val d’Aran, a remote valley in the Pyrenees, has got a good participation, some alpine sites are particularly difficult to get and they are pretty unknown. This last minute participant completed all the sites of Val d’Aran with valuable and well documented pictures. I do not know what was his motivation and he probably should have more photos of other sites already covered. His interest in completing all sites with photos denotes an interest beyond pure competition, more probably an interest in sharing the nice sites of Val d’Aran and showing them to the world. There is some local pride, some eager to collaborate and lots of love for nature.
The jury will have a lot of work to review more than 7,000 photographs submitted by nearly 100 participants. At the international level have been uploaded 59,000 photographs so that Andorra and Catalonia areas is in the third position.
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Thankfully the involvement of all participants, some from the special group of Flickr, other veterans of previous contests, but it is remarkable that 60% of new participants have been taken part in it during a month.
The most popular has been the Sierra del Cadi-Moixeró with 12 participants, and the most photographed place is Collserola with 473 photos. The Montseny massif is in second place both in participation and in photographs.
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Now we need time to digest all this volume, the Wikipedians to develop information on natural heritage motivated by new pictures, and the jury to decide who are the winners. Good luck to all participants and thank who have contributed to the spread of natural heritage».