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We need photos of your car for the 2021 Calendar!

65sunbeam

SAOCA Membership Director
Diamond Level Sponsor
Thanks to all who have donated so far this year to keep this website and club operating. For those who donate at the Gold level and above, you will receive a nice 2021 calendar that will be mailed out at the end of this year.
But to do that we need high resolution photos of your Sunbeam taken with interesting backgrounds. As found or barn find photos are welcome too! Here is a photo of an Alpine I found a few months ago. And yes the spare tire is mounted to the boot lid!DSC02977.JPG
Send photos to membership@sunbeamalpine.org
And for those who have not yet donated this year-your support is needed and appreciated. What a great resource we have here to keep our cars running and to learn new things about Sunbeams!
Thank you
Eric
 
I love that photo! I certainly hope it makes the cut for the calendar, but also hope there is lots of competition that makes the choice difficult.
 
Reedsport Alpine.jpg
This sad S3 waves at me every time I drive through Reedsport, Oregon. I think the owner might throw in the pool ladder at no cost. Not exactly calendar material, though.
 
Jim,
Is that the one you had at the invasion in Long Island?
No. That was the parts car from the same purchase. Here is the LI one:
29CA8637-4EDC-4A49-867F-7D662A260597_1_201_a.jpeg

The first photo is actually staged somewhat. Here is the car as found:59B7BFDF-7E00-4613-94AF-B97B7FFFE199_1_105_c.jpeg

The fenders in the first picture have now been welded on to the car. You can see the donor Alpine sitting in the background. It was far beyond saving, but gave its salvageable sheet metal to save another car. It has been stalled since then, but will hopefully pick up soon.
 
No. That was the parts car from the same purchase. Here is the LI one:
View attachment 21282

The first photo is actually staged somewhat. Here is the car as found:View attachment 21283

The fenders in the first picture have now been welded on to the car. You can see the donor Alpine sitting in the background. It was far beyond saving, but gave its salvageable sheet metal to save another car. It has been stalled since then, but will hopefully pick up soon.
I like those wheels!
 
View attachment 21281
This sad S3 waves at me every time I drive through Reedsport, Oregon. I think the owner might throw in the pool ladder at no cost. Not exactly calendar material, though.

I've seen that Reedsport car and spoke to its owner.
 

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And the car in the building behind it.
 

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The car ran until a flood knocked down a tree and creased it. It got moved to its current location and hasn't moved since.

I was at an outdoor sports show wearing my SAOCA shirt and a guy mentioned " did you know there's a Tiger on the side of the road on Reedsport?" And then walked away. Spent an afternoon on google earth and located it. On a trip from Olympia Washington to New Mexico I took a side trip to Reedsport and found it. As it worked out, met the owner. Nice fellow. I plan to go back.
 
I could show you damage that happens to cars being used by DPOs as a shelf. But I'd rather take the picture from 15 ft away.
 
The car ran until a flood knocked down a tree and creased it. It got moved to its current location and hasn't moved since.

I was at an outdoor sports show wearing my SAOCA shirt and a guy mentioned " did you know there's a Tiger on the side of the road on Reedsport?" And then walked away. Spent an afternoon on google earth and located it. On a trip from Olympia Washington to New Mexico I took a side trip to Reedsport and found it. As it worked out, met the owner. Nice fellow. I plan to go back.
I'm about to put my S6 back on the road, and one of our first trips will be to Florence, OR. I'll have to stop and talk this time. Thanks for scouting this out.
 
I'm about to put my S6 back on the road, and one of our first trips will be to Florence, OR. I'll have to stop and talk this time. Thanks for scouting this out.

PM me when you plan to go. I'll set it up and be there too. I have the owner's contact information
 

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Thanks to all who have donated so far this year to keep this website and club operating. For those who donate at the Gold level and above, you will receive a nice 2021 calendar that will be mailed out at the end of this year.
But to do that we need high resolution photos of your Sunbeam taken with interesting backgrounds. As found or barn find photos are welcome too! Here is a photo of an Alpine I found a few months ago. And yes the spare tire is mounted to the boot lid!View attachment 21267
Send photos to membership@sunbeamalpine.org
And for those who have not yet donated this year-your support is needed and appreciated. What a great resource we have here to keep our cars running and to learn new things about Sunbeams!
Thank you
Eric

I pm'd someone about the calendar a couple of weeks ago and didn't get a reply.

Could you answer the following for me?

Thanks!

1. When is the deadline for photo submissions?

2. If the deadline hasn't already passed, what resolution / size / format / file type do you need?
 
We could use photos now if not sooner!
Here is a note from Greggers about photo requirements he posted last year.

For funsies, I decided to look back at the previous four or five years I've been in charge of putting together the calendars and posters. We received an average of 20 photos. (That average was thrown off by the year we got 40 photos (more on why that doesn't matter later)). Of those 20, roughly half are typically too low res to be usable. At a time or two, I've reached out for larger versions, and often I either receive smaller versions, or I'm simply told "This is the only version of the photo I have." On average, one photo was taken a long time ago, and it shows. And usually, one is a professional photo. We can't use those. If your photo says, "Blah Blah Photography" and your name isn't Blah Blah, your photo will not be used (and if your name is Blah Blah, please resubmit the photo without the watermark). Sorry, but we simply can't risk getting sued. A lawsuit would end the club. Period.

So after that, by mid-November each year, I end up with seven or eight viable photos. We need 15. Twelve for the months, one for the cover, and two for the platinum and diamond donors certificates. Of those seven or eight, an average of two are vertically oriented. Vertically oriented photos don't work for the calendar, because it's a horizontal thing. Theoretically, one could use multiple vertical shots to create a single horizontal calendar page. But, and I admit this is a personal failing, I simply don't care for calendar collages. If you want a collaged calendar, I encourage you to volunteer to design the calendar every year.

Of the five or six remaining photos, one or two isn't an Alpine. We can debate all day long about whether non-Alpine Rootes vehicles belong in the calendar of a club called "The Sunbeam Alpine Owners Association of America," but most years, we're scrambling for any photos we can get, so I don't discriminate. Well, that's not entirely true. I discriminate against photos with people in them. No offense, you're pretty, but that's not the kind of calendar we're putting together (and I don't want to have to get into model releases and all that). I think of the calendar as a holistic story. Perhaps that's another one of my personal failings, and it's mostly due to the fact that while you consume the calendar one month at a time, as I craft it into the wee hours after working my day job through 12 hour days, I live with it as a whole for a couple of weeks. So it's weird to me to have one photo with people among 11 other photos without.

All of those five or six photos need some level of retouching. Sometimes it's removing oil spots from the driveway (again, my personal preference is not to be reminded that these things often leak like a sieve). Sometimes it's changing the color tone so that the image will look good when printed. Sometimes, I have to remove or recreate parts of the image (see if you can spot the five photos this year that didn't have enough trees, roads, sky, rocks, etc. And see if you can spot the one that used to have a "no littering" sign right in the middle of the photo).

If your photo hasn't been chosen, first check to see if it's too small. Typically a minimum of 1mb is viable. Sometimes higher. Sometimes, and this is a rare sometimes, a photo of smaller byte size can work if there's enough photo there. The calendar photos need to be 11 x 8.5 plus some bleed, preferably at at least 150 dpi. Everything that comes out of your phone comes out at 72 dpi. So, if you do the math, the photo needs to be at least 22 x 17. Sure, these days, most phones put out that physical size or higher. But there are vagaries in all that. For example, one photo was only 256k, but magically it was like 40 inches wide at 72 dpi. So I was able to adjust the physical size down while maintaining the byte size, and the result was a viable photo that was tiny but large. That doesn't always work. The longer I have to work with it to make a photo to make it work, the more it better be a fantastic photo.

And second, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, check to see if it's vertically oriented. They don't work. Theoretically, I could crop a vertical photo to make it work in the horizontal calendar. However, if it's too low-res a photo already, it'll be way too low once it's cropped. At the risk of overcomplicating the discussion, say you've got an 8.5 x 11 photo, when it's cropped to 8.5 x 6, it's now not only not the right orientation for the calendar, which needs to be 11 x 8.5. but it's also simply too small. So it needs to be size-adjusted 30% larger in each direction. Take a small photo that's been cropped and adjust its size up and it becomes a muddy mess.

Third, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, check to see whether or not it's been used in the past several years. If I get 16 photos and one of them was featured in last year's calendar, guess which one gets the call this year. Now, if you're a gold-level member, you don't get to see the certificates. It may very well be possible that your photo has been used in a certificate.

And fourth, if your photo doesn't end up in the calendar, ask yourself if you submitted it before. Doing this isn't easy. And I'll apologize before I say this. Sorry. If you send the same image two or three years in a row, I may think we've already used it. In one case, I keep getting the same photo that was in the 2017 calendar. Should I use the exact same photo again?

Gun to my head, I'd speculate that these days, 50% of Alpines are red and 20% are white (a completely unscientific guess based on what I see in the photos and at the various car shows). And as beautiful as your car may be, you could put five different Alpines on the same background, and you'd be hard pressed to pick yours out of a lineup. So the photo setting itself is what makes it. Is your photo setting boring or interesting? Is it simple or is it distracting? Is it fun, funny, exciting, cool? Is it clean or does it have something in it that makes it illegal or inappropriate? Does the average member want to look at your neighbor's ugly Dodge Caravan in the background? Will the require a great deal of retouching or cropping? These are the questions I have to ask myself when I fire up Photoshop and InDesign.

After some 40-50 hours of scrounging, begging, retouching, stretching, fretting, deciding, designing, and various other machinations of putting together a calendar (then putting $1,200 worth on my personal credit card), if there magically happen to be leftover photos, those photos get moved into next year's folder. I'm excited to say that the 2021 folder is the fullest I've ever seen at this point. And I'd be more than happy to share that folder with whoever wants to design the calendar and certificates next year.

Greg
 
I pm'd someone about the calendar a couple of weeks ago and didn't get a reply.

Could you answer the following for me?

Thanks!

1. When is the deadline for photo submissions?

2. If the deadline hasn't already passed, what resolution / size / format / file type do you need?

I responded to you, but I’m not sure where the message got crossed up.

I take advantage of cyber Monday sales when ordering the calendar, so it’s safe to say any photo that arrives after Thanksgiving has little chance of getting in.

Eric was kind enough to post my angry Christmas morning manifesto, but to sum up, 1.5mb or above usually works. But give me what you have, because I might be able to adjust. Bigger is always better. I work with 215mb files at work every day, so you can’t do too big. But you definitely can do too small. Format doesn’t matter as long as it’s horizontal.
 
I responded to you, but I’m not sure where the message got crossed up.

I take advantage of cyber Monday sales when ordering the calendar, so it’s safe to say any photo that arrives after Thanksgiving has little chance of getting in.

Eric was kind enough to post my angry Christmas morning manifesto, but to sum up, 1.5mb or above usually works. But give me what you have, because I might be able to adjust. Bigger is always better. I work with 215mb files at work every day, so you can’t do too big. But you definitely can do too small. Format doesn’t matter as long as it’s horizontal.

Thanks for the info. I shoot RAW fine, so my files are normally 12-18MB once I post process them.
 
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