Pix.ie Patricks

I once heard a friend saying that the highlight of her childhood St Patrick's Day Parade, was a young fella on a donkey, followed by a hay truck topped with freezing young wans doing a boxreel to stave off frostbite, all capped off with a few shiny tractors and a milk lorry being washed down the streets with sheets of driving rain. Fun!

And while the weather cant be upgraded, its not the case for the festivities, especially in the larger cities. I can only speak for Dublin, but I loved the advent of the week long celebrations. So much to see and do to shake off the deep winter blues. I'm looking forward to introducing my young nepweh to some of it this year! :)

And this year we have another addition to what will hopefully be an annual photoblogging/blogging community event



Pixie Irelands answer to Flickr, has been working with the organisers of the Irish St Patrick’s Festival on a huge photo sharing project to help document this year’s festival in photos from the perspective of those attending. The aim is to invite everyone bringing their camera to this year’s events to contribute their photos to the official St Patrick’s Festival group so that the experience can be shared with people from all over the world.

This is such a cool idea, its brilliant to have photos from so many all in one place, to be able to experience the festival through so many eyes. I love looking back on everyone's photos of Pride, every year, the things you missed others spotted, and just another viewpoint on the whole occasion.

To celebrate this new venture, Pix.ie has developed a competition, details to be announced. There are fantastic prizes from Canon with a total value of just under €1,800, these are very generous prizes!!!

• 1st Prize – Canon EOS 1000D digital SLR camera, Selphy ES3 photo printer, 150 Euro photography training course, adding memory card and photo printing paper. Total value €1,050


• 2nd Prize – Powershot E1 digital camera and Selphy ES3 photo printer. Total Value €480


• 3rd Prize – Selphy ES3 photo printer. Total Value €240

But that's not all, for the St Patrick's Festival parade on March 17th, they are having the St Patrick's Festival Pixie Party:

• 20 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the St Patrick's Festival parade from a vetted viewing area. Each will be given an official wristband to gain access to this exclusive VIP area.


• 4 bloggers and photobloggers will be invited to watch the parade from the Festival Grandstand.


• 2 photobloggers will be invited to join the world media and take photos of the parade from the elevated position from the official open topped Media Bus which is positioned on the parade route.


• 2 Pixie users will chosen (subject to a security check) and given a Golden Pass which provides exclusive access to the parade route on the day. Only 12 Golden Passes will be issued this year to the international media and this is the first time photographers outside of the national and international media have been invited on into the parade route. This is HUGE.

So how can you get in on the act?

Write a blog post, post a photo on your blog, link to http://pix.ie/group/stpatricksfestival, re-tweet for @stpatricksfest and even if you dont win one of the amazing Canon prizes or the parade passes, there is more!

To celebrate the Guinness 250 year anniversary, the Guinness Storehouse are inviting 250 Pixie users, bloggers and photobloggers to continue the Pixie Party after the parade and join in the fun at the Storehouse's annual Paddy's Day festival on March 17th. Just go to the pix.ie blog here and declare your interest!


Fore more info and special twitter announcements follow @stpatricksfest and @pixie on Twitter for more information and news about what is going on. (Hashtag for St Patricks's Festival is #spf09)