It would seem that the contest for September 2006 never really happened (my, that's a long thread though) and since I'd just seen the perfect idea I thought I'd suggest it as a contest for October.

I'm willing to bet that this superb idea of mine is very old hat and gets suggested on every contest thread, so feel free to use this as the "tell Morat he's a dumbo" thread.

So, my idea is simple. Every time I upload an image the instructions tell me I have to comply with the snapshot policy, and right in there it says...

"Obviously it is possible for a talented photographer to take any of these topics and create something wonderful"

So how about it. A competition where you have to create acceptable images that would normally breach the snapshot policy, because they either contain (grand)children, friends or pets, or are "Out of focus Polaroid photos taken from a moving frame of reference, scanned into the computer at 60x80px, then scaled up to 1600x1200 in Photoshop with a meticulously positioned lens flare and a HUGE watermark to keep people from "stealing" it, don't forget to save it with the highest JPEG compression so that you get every little compression artifact in crisp detail."

How about it?

as quite a lot of people uploading this kind of material already ignore the snapshot policy I'm not sure how effective this would be but would certainly be interesting to see some different takes on it.

Genius! I wanna do that...i already mastered the technique (just view my gallery).

How about a contest for natural design patterns found in nature like the spiral of a fern or the designs left by erosion on the earth. It doesn't matter where you live, you can find many designs in the natural world around you. Another idea would be man made city patterns.
Russ

As for Morat's idea, we already had the Breaking the Rules contest so that is quite similar in nature and Phil has a point too...I think Verena suggested something similar to Russ's idea one time but to my knowledge we haven't done one like this and it sounds like another worthy idea given the fact that all could participate...what say the powers that be?