This winter, the Botanical Garden in Golden Gate Park is sponsoring a photography contest.
“The Great Garden Winter Shootout” takes place from December 21, 2010 until February 18, 2011. The subject matter is the SF Botanical garden in all its winter glory.
Shoot magnolias, aloes or whatever strikes you. You never know how the cooler temperatures, fog and overcast skies will contribute to a vibrant photo. The contest categories are:
- Flowers
- Foliage
- Water (ponds, rain, dew drops)
- Picture the Winter Garden (landscapes)
- Theme Gardens
- Black & White
- Children 12 and under
Awards will be given for the best of each category (1st, 2nd and 3rd place). Winners will receive prizes, exhibition in the Hall of Flowers Gallery, and of course, bragging rights for the best photos of the San Francisco Botanical Garden’s winter season.
The entry fee is $10 per person; download a registration form here. For more information on the contest including complete rules, visit the SFBG website.
Sarah B.
Apparently this post is by Sarah Ballard, wife of the notorious Nathan Ballard and a City employee at RPD.
The San Francisco Botanical Garden Society is a private business that both leaches off the Arboretum and destroys public access to the gardens.
I encourage everyone NOT to enter this contest and to NOT give any funds to San Francisco Botanical Garden Society until they return to their proper role as fundraiser for the Arboretum and not Rajah of the Arboretum!
We need those fees removed TODAY!
Actually the post is not by Sarah Ballard, it’s by me, who goes by Sarah B., and who runs this website. I have no affiliation with the Botanical Garden.
George, how is public access destroyed?
I just read David Harvey’s book “A Brief History of Neoliberalism” and he details how the ruling elites in this country use privatization of the public “commons” as a way to maintain profitability during this economic crisis. Just look at those Wall St. bankers, like Goldman Sachs, who created the housing crisis with their parasitic “loan shark” subprime mortgages. They came out like bandits, literally! Banking profits are at a historical high, as it unemployment and the number of foreclosures across the country.
The Botanical Garden Society is hooked into Wall St. They have just under $10,000,000 invested with Dodge & Cox, a Wall St. mutual fund. Yet they cry broke and used that phony excuse to implement the fee for non-residents to get into the Arboretum. And part of their privatization coup was to change the 70-year-old name of OUR Arboretum to THEIR Botanical Garden Society. And who makes up this society? You guessed it, lots of filthy rich blue bloods who live in places like Hillsborough and Inverness. So snobby rich folk who don’t even live in San Francisco has writ large the lie that the Arboretum is “broke” in order to loot another piece of the commons, in this case OUR Arboretum in Golden Gate Park, from us the citizens of San Francisco. And this crime is on par with what the Enron Corporation did to electricity rate payers in the State of California — which is a giant rip off.
We need to take it back and make OUR Arboretum accessible to ALL people, whether resident or not!
Wow, it looks as if this is a hot issue! OK, there’s one person running a Facebook page to save the Arboretum from fees and Segways (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=355215693083&v=wall) and a petition that needs a lot more sigs to reach its goals (http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/-save-the-San-Francisco-Botanical-gardens-Strybing-Arboretum). And there’s even a website with a domain (http://www.keeparboretumfree.org).
But what of the photo shootout? Are opponents going to stage a protest like they did on Aug. 7? How about some civil disobedience?
It is maybe just a little bit weird that there is an entry fee.