A Day in the Life

The Next DITL Days :

DITL Day: Take your pictures! Friday, April 26th Saturday, May 4th Sunday, May 12th Monday, May 20th Tuesday, May 28th	Submission period ends: Tuesday, April 30th Wednesday, May 8th Thursday, May 16th Friday, May 24th Saturday, June 1st
The Best of 2012! Congratulations boyzici for your winning entry on April 23rd, 2012. boyzici's DITL documented his volunteer efforts to help improve the lives of the people in the village of Buigiri in Tanzania, Africa. His dedication to helping the school children and blind members of this small community touched many people. The Best of 2011! Congratulations facethemoon for your winning entry on June 24th, 2011. facethemoon's DITL documented a stunning Summer day, spent outdoors with her gorgeous family and a friend, soaking up the sunshine and exploring the coastline of the Canadian west coast, reminding us all of the charm of lazy Summer days. The Best of 2010! Congratulations momlovesnoel for your winning entry on August 16th, 2010. momlovesnoel's DITL documented an average day as a parent caring for a child with special needs. Most of us are privileged to have children with typical needs, and have never experienced the ups and downs, the challenges or the joys that children like her beautiful Noël bring - and many were humbled by the new perspective of life that her images provided. Entries like these enrich the community by giving us an intimate and honest look at the very different facets of life we all lead. The Best of 2009! Congratulations facethemoon for your winning entry on September 30th, 2009. facethemoon's DITL documented her family traveling across Canada, on their way back to the west coast to find a place to settle. facethemoon made several DITLs over the course of the year documenting her journey through the country, building a following eager to see her family's return to her oceanside home. The Best of 2008! Congratulations sarasos for your winning entry on July 5th, 2008. sarasos captured an outing at the beach with her family: a quintessential summer's day made special by a little bit of quiet reflection about her two children growing and changing. The Best of 2007! Congratulations moonshineray for your winning entry on June 29th, 2007. moonshineray photographed her family's quiet visit to her grandmother in her last days of life, and deeply moved a great number of people in the community by sharing it. The Best of 2006! Congratulations glee for your winning entry on June 26th, 2006. glee was the first member of the community capture a DITL birth and shared beautiful images from a mother's homebirth.

1. Please put all images under a cut. You may have one teaser image out of cut if you like, but try to keep it to a reasonable size.


2. If you choose to participate in the weekly theme, please remember to put the word "theme" in your cut tag or your above-cut description so that people know.


3. This is not a rule, but just a strong recommendation: Don't friends-lock your entries unless you really feel you have to. People who are not members of the community can vote and comment, and if your entry is friends-locked they may not be able to see it come voting time.


4. No text-only entries.


5. Absolutely, positively, no NO spamming.


6. Please try and take your photos ON the Day in the Life day. At least, if you don't, please try and lie about it. There's no way we're going to find out, and if you start saying how you really took the photos on Saturday, and you're SO sorry, then why do we even have a day?


7. Resizing is our friend.


8. Everything in moderation. If you find that your entry makes the scroll bar narrower than the width of your thumb, chances are you're posting too many pictures, or making them too big. If you have big thumbs? I'm sorry, you don't get to post as many pictures as the tiny-thumbed people. That's just how life is sometimes.


9. No trolling! We are a photography, "slice of life" community and ask that the little glimpses you get into all the different lives be free of judgment and negative feedback. Everyone's lives are different, and not every post may be your cup of tea. To help prevent trolling, we have had to turn off anonymous commenting.


10. Keep an open mind: remember you may be viewing the days of people from different countries with different cultures. What may seem odd to you might be normal to someone else. Please refrain from criticizing someone else's life and photographs.
    
    


11. No pornographic-esque nudity. *collective 'awwww'* Yeah, yeah. If you want to go create a Naked Day in the Life community, you can go right ahead. But until that day, try to avoid the Big 3.
    Tasteful nudity is perfectly acceptable. i.e. you have your arms covering your breasts, or a strip of cloth/sheet/whatever over your various parts. As long as you're not actually showing off the actual bits, you're within the rules. Nothing we could mistake for porn.
    Baby nudity is not pornographic unless you make it so. If you're comfortable posting it, we're comfortable having it. Please refer to this entry regarding personal hang-ups.
    


12. No photographs of illegal activities. This includes, but is not limited to; violence, theft, drug use and paraphernalia or paying hookers.
    
    
13. Please try to keep your captions short. If you have one or two pictures that require a bit more explanation, feel free to do so. But as a rule, shorter is better.


14. Warning: This post may contain scenes of violence, partial nudity, and coarse language. Viewer discretion is advised.
    In other words, if your post is going to contain words stronger than "codswallop" or "poopie", or if it contains the above-mentioned 'tasteful nudity', please include a line in either the cut text or the introduction saying so. For clarification: There is some confusion regarding the definition of partial nudity. Bathing suits and underwear are not nudity, cleavage is not nudity - naked is nudity. Warnings are required for partial and/or naked bits, not underwear (at least not underwear you can't see through) or low cut shirts.


15. With that said, this community is not rated G. Warnings exist but are not required for everything that you personally may find "questionable". Please consider all posts potentially PG-13.


16. ditl is about your day, in pictures: tell us a story, show us your unique perspective and what makes your day different from everyone else on your block! Don't tell us how great you are at Photoshop or how many fonts you have on your computer, that's not the part that matters!


17. Above all, have fun! Try new things, post daring pictures, live a little!

Any trolling whatsoever will result in being...






How do you do a 'cut'?
Livejournal has an explanation in their FAQ on LJ-CUTs and how to customize them.

How do I put an image in my entry?
Use this tag: <IMG SRC="url_of_your_image.jpg">. You must upload your photos to a storage that allows remote hosting, otherwise no one will be able to see them but you. Make sure you read the terms of service of any host carefully for their remote hosting policy. Places like Geocities, Tripod or Angelfire do not allow remote hosting.
Alternatively, you can also insert images without writing the code by using the rich text editor, or a Livejournal utility like Semagic. More is available from Livejournal's FAQ entry regarding images.

Okay, so where can I host my image?
If you don't have your own domain you can use Photobucket (be sure to read their Terms of Service through), Flickr, TinyPic, Fotki and Livejournal's own image storage service are good places (image storage is available only to paid members).

How do I resize images?
First we can tell you how not to resize images. Do not write the tag as follows:

<img src="http://your_image_address.jpg" width=50% height=50%>

This is not a proper image resize and if you submit entries where the pictures are formatted in this manner it will be rejected. To properly resize an image you must shrink it in an image editor like Irfanview, Coreldraw or Photoshop. For more information, please refer to this entry.

How do I contact you if I have a problem, question or complaint?
Please go to ditlmods and leave a screened comment on the questions entry.

This entry wasn't family-safe and I was forced to have an awkward conversation with my children.
This community may contain entries with images of partial nudity, kisses, steamy shower mirrors or toilets; if you wish to shelter your children from these images of daily life, or if you fear they may get you fired, do not browse this community in the presence of your boss and/or curious offspring.

Why was my entry rejected? That hurt my feelings.
The most common reason entries are rejected is lack of or incorrect lj-cut tag. Other reasons your entry could have been rejected are: incorrect resizing, broken images, explicit content, broken HTML or inadequate warning of content. Regardless of why your entry was rejected, you should receive an explanation in your rejection notice. If for any reason you do not, please contact a mod through their journal or email.

I'd like to look at all the past winners and participants, how do I do that?
Voting and winners entries are filed under tags and you can feel free to go back and look at anyone's entry and leave them comments about how great their photos were. They won't mind.

Why do we vote? Isn't it awful of you to judge another person's life?
Voting is to encourage participants to experiment with their creativity and to prevent us from falling into a ho-hum community where everyone's entries are the same. Very few, if any, members of the community make a living off their photos - but most of us have a desire to learn and grow. Voting keeps us motivated to try new things. All votes are screened to prevent bias or hurt feelings. Mods and winners from the previous week are exempt from being voted for.

Do I get anything if I win?
Unfortunately, until we can figure out a way to send cookies via email, you're SOL. However, stay tuned because eventually we'll get our act together and make some sort of userinfo-appropriate graphic or icon for winners.

Can you guys un-lock/edit/fix my images in that entry I submitted just now?
No. Mods are only able to delete an offending entry. We cannot fix your broken images, un-friends-lock your entry or correct your spelling mistakes. If the error is minor enough to still be let through you'll receive email notification when your entry is approved, and then you can go and fix it yourself.

OMGWTFFRIENDSPAGE?! How could you have let that un-cut entry through!?
When we look at submissions in the mod queue we cannot see if a cut is functional, we can only see if someone included the tag <LJ-CUT>. A common mistake is to immediately close the cut tag by writing: <LJ-CUT> </LJ-CUT> - This is an easy mistake to make in rich text or when using an editor. We are not able to see when this happens and will only see the functional part of the cut tag. Upon realizing the entry is uncut, we give a 5 or 10 minute warning (depending on the time of day) and then delete the entry. A note is left on the author's journal, and the source code is saved in case it's needed for resubmitting. The moral of the story is to always make sure your cut tag works.

I never win and that makes me emo.
Learning how to use your camera is a must. We're not saying go out and take an expensive photography course... but simple things like how standing still while taking a photograph will make them less blurry, or that when you take pictures outdoors with the wrong white balance setting they'll all look like you took them underwater.
We also have the perfect reading material for you full of tips for how to make a winning entry on DITL; these tips and comments were taken from a poll that ran for a few weeks and took responses from the entire community on what made them want to exercise their right to vote.

I submitted an absolutely stunning theme entry this week but I placed in the normal winner's circle and someone else got best theme! What gives?
When people are voting for a theme entry they need to remember to put the word "Theme" in the vote, otherwise we count it as a vote toward the regular winner's circle. It is entirely possible that the readers, so awe-struck with the beauty of your submission, were unable to remember this when voting and intended to give you a theme vote but forgot that crucial word... as a result you placed first/second/third in the normal winner's circle and didn't get enough theme votes to have a chance at the best theme title that you truly deserved. Always remember to put the word "Theme" in your theme vote.

I don't understand: when do I submit? Only on DITL day?
Potential winners can submit their entry anytime between DITL day and about mid-day a few days later when the "submissions are over" entry goes up. A table of these days is available toward the top of this page.