It's been a while since the Dangleway ran a faintly desperate promotion, indeed there's seemingly been a moratorium since a flurry of romantic Night Flight interest back in the spring.
No definition of 'recent' is given in the terms and conditions, so if you've ever flown across the Thames by cablecar your snaps will probably do. But TfL are obviously hoping you'll go back, because that's the point of the competition.
TfL think that these are some of the top reasons why the average Londoner might ride the cablecar. Not because it goes anywhere important, but because it's fun.
I hope you weren't expecting a proper competition. Being in some way professional won't help you here, it's more about whether you can capture a photo that the judges like. A night flight photo would be 'interesting', because night flights are on the Dangleway's promotional list. A romantic summer sunset or a family day out would be 'interesting', because the photo will contain people enjoying themselves, and that's bang on brand. And a silly selfie with friends would be 'interesting', because oh god selfies are a thing these days aren't they shallow shallow shallow Like Like Fave woo look at us!! sadface.
Good news, there's not just one set of prizes, there are four, to be won every Friday from this week until the start of August. Get in this week and you might have the best chance because there are only four days not seven, and nobody rides the cablecar before the weekend.
Powershot N2 cameras retail at around £200, so that's £1600 of electronic goods on offer over the summer. If TfL are paying then it'll take almost 200 round trips to pay for the prizes, well within the extra ridership numbers the competition might generate. Or perhaps Canon donated the eight cameras in return for getting a mention, in which case I've just given them even more publicity, sorry.
And yes they did say "a pair of cameras". I don't know about you but I only ever use one camera at a time, but then I'm a single person and therefore not exactly target audience. The competition appears to be aimed at couples and families, which is fine, but also cunning because when couples and families visit the cablecar they spend a lot more on tickets than I do.
See, I told you it wasn't a serious competition, just a bit of fun. Enter every photo in your Dangleway camera roll if you fancy, because one might just have the golden touch.
See, I told you it wasn't a serious competition. Photos with people in are what the judges really want, like this grinning selfie or this kid in a Spiderman hoodie yawning, as featured on the competition page.
That sounds fairly standard. Your photo stays yours, but TfL would like to splash it all over their social media channels, because by 'interesting' photo what they really hope is 'viral'.
Yes, I'm sure they would. Every tagged photo you release into the real world is another bit of free advertising for the cablecar, and this saves paying PR folk and marketing drones to do the same. But tagged photos won't win you the competition, the smallprint says your entry must be emailed.
So what are you waiting for. Grab a partner, and a small baby, and maybe gran, and ideally a cute puppy, and fly off from North Greenwich at dusk for the ultimate dangleselfie opportunity. And either you'll win two cameras, if you're interesting enough, or you'll have handed over nearly twenty quid for nothing.
