Parents Magazine Offers Photography Tips for Its Free Baby Photo Contest

NEW YORK, May 6 /PRNewswire/ -- Timed to coincide with the annual Parents magazine cover contest ending June 19, Parents.com editors are offering photography tips to entice proud parents to submit cute baby pictures to the Parents Magazine Cover Contest. Parents magazine is looking for photos of kids aged three months to six years old.

Proud parents can upload up to six cute baby pictures to Parents.com, and judges will select the cutest kid to appear on the November 2010 cover of Parents magazine. From all the cute baby pictures submitted, Parents magazine judges will choose 20 semi-finalists, based on the criteria set forth in the Official Rules. Judges will narrow the semi-finalists down to nine finalists, plus a Reader's Choice winner.

Dana Points, Parents magazine editor-in-chief, offers these photography tips:

1. Make sure the child's personality shines through during a happy, energetic moment.
2. Background is important so be sure it's not too busy, but rather simple and natural – outdoors is good!
3. Don't put too many clothes on your cute kid; avoid hats and peek-a-boo blankets.
4. Don't make the mistake of getting a really extreme close-up of your child; include some background to make the photo interesting.
5. Take a lot of photos, which will give you tons to choose from when uploading to the contest.

After photos are uploaded, parents will receive an email the following week telling them their child's photo is ready for Reader's Choice voting. Parents, friends, and family will then be able to vote daily for a week. The photo with the most votes each week will be deemed a Reader's Choice semi-finalist. On or around July 7, the 11 Reader's Choice semi-finalists from each week of the contest will be posted for final voting to determine the one Reader's Choice winner who will be one of the 10 finalists flown to New York for the photo shoot and the chance to be on the November 2010 cover.

To enter the Parents magazine cover contest, proud parents are invited to submit up to six cute baby pictures for free before June 19, 2010. Enter at Parents Magazine Cover Contest.

To share your family's parenting tips and interact with other parents, Parents.com invites parents to follow them on Twitter @parentsmagazine and in the Parents Community at http://community.parents.com.

About Parents.com

Parents.com is the premier parenthood site on the Web, and the interactive companion to Parents magazine and American Baby magazine. With its stable of easy-to-use, helpful tools like the baby name finder, the personal pregnancy calendar, the activity finder, and the birthday party planning tool, Parents.com serves moms and dads, providing everything every parent needs to raise happy, healthy families from crib to college -- how, when and where they need it.

SOURCE Parents.com