One fun way to spice up a fall semester at college in the middle of a pandemic is to hold a friendly—and safe—contest that involves taking pictures of eye-catching scenery, either natural or man-made. That’s what the GeneseoNY Instagram account had in mind when it held its photo competition this autumn and was rewarded with some beautiful results.
Communication major senior Mary-Margaret Dwyer, director of the contest, explained how people entered their work.
“How it works is that they had to fill out a Google form that was linked in our Instagram bio. They fill out their name and contact information and then have to submit a picture of Geneseo in the fall,” Dwyer said. “We had some Geneseo community members, as well as a lot of Geneseo students participating.”
Dwyer is one of two social media interns running the Instagram account, which gets the word out on all that is going on in Geneseo. The interns meet every other week to discuss some of their strategies, post on Facebook and talk about new things they will post or new contest ideas.
GeneseoNY is a supplementary part of a broader mission by the Promote Geneseo tourism committee which, perhaps needless to say, exists to promote the town.
“This semester, we’re starting to implement an Instagram strategy that we’re just kind of going into, so we’re focusing more on that right now,” Dwyer said.
Since the contest was open to both the college and the general community, it was a nice way to bring the two worlds together. Instructions for submissions were not overly specific.
“It was a very broad topic so people could get really creative with it, basically anything that they thought was fitting,” Dwyer said.
Generally, the account shares high quality pictures that represent the general area well, bringing out Geneseo’s beauty. Sunset pictures are very popular on the account. Some throwback posts every now and then are also appreciated since people like to see how the area looked like back in the old days.
“We are showing the public all of the great things that Geneseo has to offer,” Dwyer said. “We’re helping them see new parts of their community that they never saw before, reinforcing everyone’s love for this community.”
Since many students don’t necessarily venture out too much, especially as freshmen, interesting parts of the village and town can be displayed on Instagram for them to check out.
“This account is a window into that world outside of the campus, and it might make the underclassmen want to go to the farmer’s market or stop by one of the Main Street shops,” Dwyer said.
The winner of the contest, senior Julia Labrozzi, was announced on the Instagram page and earned a $50 gift card prize. The competition encourages college students and community members to take a step back and look at the beauty around the community and capture that in a photo they feel accurately portrays said beauty.
There is also excitement for future events to come.
“We definitely want to do another photo contest. We’re thinking of either one or two more in the second semester,” Dwyer said. “We might change around some of the qualifications or some of the submission guidelines, but people really like these photo contests, so we’re definitely going to have another.”