Contest FAQ

This year’s theme, Hobbies, celebrates the creative ways our residents unwind, build, and explore. Whether your pastime is quilting, woodworking, baking, fishing, sculpting, or gardening, we invite you to showcase the unique skills and activities that thrive in Lac Ste. Anne County.

The contest is open to all residents of Lac Ste. Anne County, excluding County employees and elected officials.

No. The contest is completely free to enter for all Lac Ste. Anne County residents.

No. All entries must be submitted through the official online form on this web page between September 1 and October 15, 2026.

Each resident may enter up to five (5) photos. However, an entrant can win only one cash prize per contest, even if multiple submissions place in the top rankings.

No. All submitted photos must have been taken within the past 12 months (since September 1, 2025) to ensure the contest accurately reflects recent community life and activity across the County.

All qualifying entries will be published in the online gallery on October 19. Public voting runs from October 19 through November 1. After a post-voting audit to verify vote integrity and image specifications, the 13 photos with the most verified public votes will be declared the official winners on November 9.

Public voting determines the top winning entries. County staff then review these top photos to curate the official wall calendar, assigning each photo to an appropriate month based on seasonal relevance, composition, and layout requirements. From these winning selections, staff choose the entry best suited for the calendar cover, which receives the $250 Grand Prize. The remaining twelve featured photos each receive a $100 prize.

Before voting opens, all submissions undergo a staff review. Photos are excluded from the gallery if they fail to meet minimum resolution standards, were taken outside County boundaries, or violate formatting guidelines (such as vertical orientation or heavy digital filters). This ensures that every photo in the public gallery is fully eligible for calendar publication.

You may vote for as many different photos as you like, but you can only cast one vote per photo every 24 hours.

Voting limits are tracked by Internet Protocol (IP) address. Most businesses share a single IP address across all office computers. If a colleague on your network has already voted for a specific photo within the past 24 hours, the system will prevent duplicate voting from that same network IP. If this occurs, try voting from a home network or using cellular data on a mobile device.

To ensure prizes and calendar features are shared broadly across the region, each resident is eligible for only one cash prize per contest year. If an entrant has multiple photos in the top-voted group, their highest-ranking submission will be selected for a prize, and their remaining entries will step aside to allow the next highest-voted photo from a different resident to advance into the winning lineup.

The voting platform tracks incoming vote data, including IP addresses and device fingerprints. If suspicious voting patterns or automated scripts are detected, fraudulent votes will be manually subtracted during the audit period. Submissions associated with deliberate vote manipulation will be disqualified.

We aim to feature the photos most popular with voters. If a top-voted photo has minor technical issues (such as a slight crop requirement), staff will make reasonable efforts to contact the photographer for a higher-resolution file. However, staff must enforce mandatory rules on orientation, location, and colour standards consistently to maintain fairness for all participants.