I am a sucker for free contests with fabulous prizes. So when Traveling Ted and Wes of Johnny Vagabond were kind enough to nominate me for (and alert me of) TravelSupermarket’s Capture the Colour Competition, I was all in. It’s pretty simple: choose your favorite photo from five different color categories. Nominate five others. If you’re lucky, and one wins, you get an iPad. If you’re really lucky and get the overall win, you get a £2,000 travel budget from TravelSupermarket.com. You don’t have to be nominated to do this, so go for it because the contest ends August 27.

The judges are some very talented photographers which means there’s at least five fewer people kicking my butt. 😉 Ken Kaminesky will judge the Blue photos, Daniel of Canvas of Light is judging Red, Abi of Inside the Travel Lab will decide the winner of Green, Dave and Deb of The Planet D are in charge of Yellow, and Christine of Almost Fearless will judge White.

Here are my selections…

Blue

Taken in Havana, Cuba, a city just pulsing with rhythm and song. I found these guys in an unnamed square playing their hearts out for some tips. It seemed everywhere I went there was music, either drifting out of an open window from a radio inside, or echoing off the tiles in a corner cafe. As if the Buena Vista Social Club had set up in a room on every block. People standing in line at shops or waiting for the bus all swayed or shuffled their feet if there was a tune playing nearby – and there typically was.

Red

Just a ferry ride away from Venice are a couple of good day trip getaways. (Who needs to get away from Venice???) One is Murano, famous for its glass, and the other is Burano, a town known for its lace and the bright colors of its buildings. Canals run through both and you can spend hours walking around ogling the colors without quite the crowds of tourists you find back in Venice.

White

When I spent a year in Guatemala, I did a crazy amount of exploring, trying to “cross it off my list” as it were. I really got around, but got nowhere near seeing it all. The most obvious miss was the famous Chichicastenago market. My Guatemalan friends just waved that off and told me it was “just for tourists.” While it is true that trinkets and souvenirs are sold by the ton, I still regret missing it. But these same friends also recommended I go to the market in San Francisco el Alto, allegedly the largest of all public markets, and unlike Chichicastenago, entirely for the locals. It was a steep climb into the mountains not far from where I was living in Xela. The bus crept so slowly that many passengers were able to safely sit on the roof of the bus. The market was Guatemala: intense colors, mud, bustling life, farm animals, strong sun, chilly mountain air, Mayan dialects, and a colonial church. Despite the rainbows of color, I ended up getting my best shot of all things white.

Yellow

Turkey was my first love (as well as my first book) and every time I go back I wonder about staying for another year again. Istanbul may be my favorite city on earth. This shot was taken in the Egyptian Spice Market (Mısır Çarşısı) in Istanbul, on the European side near the outlet of the Golden Horn. The spice vendors spend a lot of time keeping up the displays and so these neat little spicy pyramids are quite a contrast to the throng that is pushing and shoving behind the photographer. 🙂

Green

While writing a hiking guide for Madison, Wisconsin, I spent a lot of time on the Ice Age National Scenic Trail which threads right around our city and winds about 1000 miles through the state. It skirts along a lot of the amazing geological sights that were formed when eons of ocean deposits, upheavals, volcanic activity, and mountain building met the grinding of mile-thick ice sheets right here in the Badger State. The rock formations, and the forces that made them, are quite amazing, big and beautiful. But along the trail is all that blossoming life that comes afterward. Tiny by comparison. This shot comes from Parfrey’s Glen, home to some unique species that relish in the cooler shelter of this little gorge at the end of a spur trail on the IAT, just east of Devil’s Lake. You can see the next generation of green backlit in the blades of this fern.

My nominations:

Shannon of A Little Adrift

Adam of Travels of Adam

Kyle and Bessie of On Our Own Path

Julie of Madison Loves Kids

and the lovely Tip of Tip’s Food and Travel

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What do you have to do to join in the fun?

1. Publish a Capture the Colour blog post with images for all 5 colors if you have the images. If you don’t have all 5 colors, post images in the colors that you do have. Those who don’t have photos for all 5 colors will still be in with a chance of winning the category winner prizes but you won’t be in the running for the main prize. In your post, make sure to mention the TravelSupermarket Capture the Colour Competition page (http://www.travelsupermarket.com/capture-the-colour/) so that your readers know what Capture the Colour is.

2. Nominate and notify 5 other travel bloggers to take part in Capture the Colour at the end of your post to spread the word about the contest!

3. By 27th August 2012, let us know you’ve entered the competition by either posting a link to your blog post on Facebook mentioning Capture the Colour and tagging the TravelSupermarket.com Facebook page and/or by linking to your post via Twitter and including @travelsupermkt and #capturethecolour. We’ll be monitoring both Facebook and Twitter closely so all entries will be recorded. For those who don’t have a Facebook or Twitter account, you can email your entry to capturethecolour@travelsupermarket.com, including your name, email address and phone number.

4. TravelSupermarket.com and the judges of the contest will share and retweet some of our favorite Capture the Colour posts throughout the competition so be sure to follow our Facebook and Twitter accounts closely!

5. Every Capture the Colour blog entry will be judged by our 5 judges with each judge selecting a color category winner to receive an iPad 3 or prize of similar value. The judges will then come together to select the overall winner of the £2,000 travel budget. For further information about the judging and the prizes see the Terms & Conditions by clicking the link below.

6. Terms and Conditions

Each individual judge will select a winner from their colour category. All the judges together will select the Grand Prize winner.

Got questions?

If you want to know more about the contest or if you have any questions please get in touch via either Twitter (@travelsupermkt) or email (capturethecolour@travelsupermarket.com)