Happy New Year to all my fellow TCT members,
I would like to thank you for your ongoing support of the increasingly popular Tin Can Tourist Calendar. Since we put out a call for submissions in early January I am already getting lots of photos of beautiful and rare trailers from yesteryear!
I would like to take a moment to explain the selection process and to encourage members to send in their photos. Each year we have decided on a theme for the calendar to give the wide variety of rigs a degree of unity in the presentation. We have had, “The Places We Have Been” that featured trailers in interesting destinations and roadside attractions as well as “Before and After” to help the viewer understand the extent of the restoration process. Last year’s “It’s All in the Details” let the viewer zoom in on some of those smaller possibly overlooked details that make for a really first rate presentation. This year’s theme is “Just Like New” and I am planning on using images from original sales materials and owners manuals placed along with the photos of the member’s rigs to give the calendar a historic point of reference.
In some cases in the past members have sent me excellent photos that I have not been able to incorporate into that years calendar for a variety of reasons. The first reason is if the photo is not of high enough quality to print in the large format of a calendar. It may look fine as a 4″x6″ but is too grainy when blown up. Another shot we avoid is photos with people in them. To give the calendar as broad an appeal as possible, it is best to leave those very personal shots out. I can do a lot of magic with Adobe Photoshop if I have to, but if your photo has too much background clutter, or twelve feet of sewer hose snaking through the foreground I may have to go to the next entry. The last reason is the one that may be the hardest to understand. So you send in a perfect picture with none of the above problems and it still does not go in the calendar that year, what is that all about? The other dilemma in putting the calendar is that sometimes we have had too many submissions of one brand of trailer. If I only have twelve pages to highlight our club’s treasure I will try not to have multiples of the same brand if possible. One year it seemed that I could have done half a year of just ____________. ( I’m not telling you the brand, sorry to tease!)
So my final word of encouragement is to send em’ in. Even if you did in years past. I hope it is not too much trouble and I will do my best to use your shot. If you have entered before you could even let me know that in your email, I cannot easily track who entered in previous years. We will be selling the calendar at Milford in the Spring, just in time for your current calendar to expire.
Again, thank you for taking the time to look through your archives and submit pictures and I can’t wait for spring to arrive and to meet many of you again at the Starlite Lounge in May! Happy Trails!
Michael Lambert