The 2011 Halloween Costume contest is over, the votes tallied and the winners are…
First Place Costume - Ben Peppers - Red Skull from Captain America
Second Place Costume - Ben Peppers - Hunk from Resident Evil
Third Place Costume - Heather Dorff - Steampunk Red Riding Hood
The winning Photographers are Ben’s photographers, Steve Ruddy taking First and Ben’s mom, Debbie Peppers, taking second and third places.
First Place Photographer - Steve Ruddy
Second Place photographer - Debbie Peppers
Third Place Photographer - Debbie Peppers
Ben won $40 for first and second place and Heather won $10 for third place in the costume contest. Steve won $25 for first place and Debbie won $25 for second and third place. With the additional $10 each for the early bird prize, Ben won a total of $50 and Debbie $35.
Now that I have announced the winners I have to say I found the results rather interesting. I had seen a few posts on Facebook saying, “Vote for me!” which was certainly allowable according to the rules and I was curious to see what that would do to the outcome.
One of the Scream Park Zombie Crew asked if professionals could participate. I said yes! Then none of them entered!
On the other hand I had the entry from the beautiful actress/producer/writer – Heather Dorff – from Chicago with some beautiful photos by a professional photographer – River Walk Studios – also from Chicago. I should mention that Heather’s Steampunk Little Red Riding Hood costume was handmade and of her own design.
Both she and her photographer posted on their facebooks to garner votes. Although I am not on the photographer’s friend list to know how many friends he has, Heather has over 2,100 friends and I was figuring that a beautiful actress asking 2,100 friends to vote for her would blow through the poll in one evening.
Her biggest competition was a fellow I met in Lexington, Kentucky at the Scarefest a while back. Ben was the only person to get a costume in the first week of the costume contest and, as such, was the only person with three costumes in the contest. Ben’s mom, Debbie, was his photographer for most of his pictures. Ben also sent a, “Vote for me!” shout out on his Facebook page but his mother didn’t as far as I can tell. Ben has 397 FB friends and his mom has 165 FB friends for a total of 562 friends between them if you add them together (though I am sure some of them are duplicates.) The fellow who took the pic of Ben and won first place doesn’t have a Facebook, as far as I can tell from Ben’s Facebook.
All in all I have to say that the winning costumes were great choices but I thought all of them were great. With Heather getting less than one percent of her Facebook Friends to vote for her, it also backs up my thought that Facebook really isn’t as good of a business tool as it is cracked up to be. It was fun and I got to see some very cool costumes
Next time I think I will do things differently, such as having the initial votes be through comments on my site so I can track it better and for the finalists I think I will have judges. I am thinking Ben and Heather would be good choices! 🙂
Thanks to everyone that participated!
John N. Collins is a writer, photographer, game & coloring book designer and a bad dancer.
Any resemblance to the King John character is merely a coincidence.
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You’re very welcome!
Thanks for participating.
On the judging question, I am thinking that, after almost sweeping the costume competition with your entries, that you have a keen eye for costumes and costume making would a good judge for it.
Thanks! I received the prize money! I see that you say you would like to make me be one of the judges next time? how would that go about or be done?