As we come to a close on Week 2, we wanted to recap some of the excitement from our very first week and give you a status report on the Photo Games.

STATUS REPORT

• We've streamlined things a ton - mostly behind the scenes with how the "PhotoStar" competitors interact.
• We created an account (@photogames) to curate and make announcements - that's a big deal!
• We've grown a lot in week 2: there are more comments and greater participation this week (and we had over 500 comments in the first week)!
• We decided that 3 games per week were more manageable...but then realized Show Off Saturday was too popular to miss.
• We've seen more people being clever with strategy, which makes us really excited - these are games, after all!

NEW PHOTO STARS

On Week 1 we had one guest star: @aweber.
We loved having a guest star so much that we doubled it to 2 for Week 2, inviting @yumyumseth and @vmoldo to play.

We're looking for future Guest Stars, keeping an eye on those who are really active in the photo community here on Steemit, and especially on who's active on #photogames.

We have some Guest Stars scheduled in advance for future weeks but we're always happy to hear your nominations. There are plenty of photographers who don't know about the games yet because we're so new, but we think this is a fun system that will bring the community together to learn more about photography and to have fun, so we'd love for more people to participate, both as players and as Photo Stars.

With that said, it's always helpful if you wanna spread the word!

And the winner is...

There were over 25 winners throughout the week and they all won rewards...

...but the big news you want to know is: who won the Photo Stars internal bragging rights competition?

Drum Roll.....
@derekkind

What does he win? All our respect and admiration.

He doesn't win money (in fact the Photo Stars are giving out their own money for prizes), but he does win bragging points (which are imaginary and have no value)! The Photo Stars really do have a lot of fun, and hopefully will make some great new acquaintances and earn more followers.

Derek barely edged out @jarvie by half a point.
_(btw this is @jarvie writing this and I'm kicking myself because I forgot to do some guesses) _

We will be keeping track of who wins each week, and believe me, when I win I'll be flaunting it a bit. There will be an ongoing tally.

P.S. Most all the public winners have been rewarded in their wallet - I know this for fact... however, now or in the future, if there is a prize that has fallen through the crack and never got sent, just tell us in a comment. We did 7 games last week, so now we're back to a more manageable level and learning how to juggle it all way better.

Some Highlights

We've only just started to do recaps on @photogames
... the account didn't even exist during week 1 but we did 3 of them to get rolling.

THOUGHTFUL THURSDAY

This was a fun game that we'll likely re-visit in the future. We have some variations in mind that we want to do first.
I think the highlight was this fun new word by @tylerw:
"Shagitude"

FIX IT FRIDAY

This game I can see as a constant favorite. Lots of people jumped in to edit these pictures and we think it'll only increase.
Our photostar @derekkind showed off a part of why he won... because I myself awarded him a point (which led to my downfall in the weekly Photo Star challenge) for this image:

SHOW OFF SATURDAY

The game is somewhat of a familiar one... show off a picture based on a theme. BUT BUT BUT... this version has even more strategy. The idea is to appeal to the judges (the Photo Stars), knowing who they are and knowing there are a few of them. The judging is a really cool system where each of the Photo Stars picks 2 submissions from their posts to bring to the final round. They want theirs to win because they get points, so they're really hoping for you to submit your best work.

In the end @vmoldo dominated this round with a consensus win with this image:

STORY TIME SUNDAY

There wasn't a results post for this week 1 game but I have some results for you now:

@snooway won for his story on this image by @caseygrimley

"Sam had been trying to control everything in his life for a long time. Since he was a boy, he would place his textbooks in his backpack in the order of the class schedule each day. His pencils were always sharpened, he always finished his homework on time, got good grades and made his parents proud. He went to bed early everyday because he believed in the adage "Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Because of this, he had never seen the constellations in the sky.

He graduated top of his class and got into the best university in the country. Things were going according to plan. He met his beautiful wife in the final year of college and they married after they both found high-paying jobs and bought their first house. Soon she was pregnant and they were so excited for the day they would welcome their daughter into the world. He faithfully drove his wife to all the checkups and classes. They prepared the nursery with the best furniture and the cutest decorations.

Her cry was nice and loud. She was the most adorable baby he had ever seen. Her delicate little fingers and short little toes were perfect. When she smiled, her dimples were deep. She brightened the lives of everyone who saw her.

This picture perfect family did not last for long. His wife died a week after the birth of their baby girl. Devastated, he left their house in the city that were full of their memories and went to his friend's beach house. After putting his daughter to bed, he left her with his friends and walked along the beach. At first his head was down, looking at his footprints in the sand. As he glanced at the imprints, he was reminded of the poem he had read many years ago called "footprints" which was about a man seeing two sets of prints in the sand, one was his and the other God's. He reached a spot where there were only one set of prints. He questioned why God left him in those difficult times but God told him the one set of prints are actually God's, for He was carrying him during those times.

Sam lifted his eyes and arms up to heaven and prayed to God, asking for strength to raise his daughter alone. A warm yellow light appeared, an answer to his prayer."

• @snooway also won for best story on my image as well
• @snooway also won for the post by @derekkind
• She didn't sweep though, because @genxrev won on the post by @aweber

We love throwing in games that involve more than photo skills... letting you showcase your creative story telling skills is wonderful. I think we can all appreciate a fun story to go along with a photo.

Where we're going with Photo Games

• We will keep growing the audience - the more people that play, the better
• We'll recruit more new guest Photo Star competitors
• More competitors increases the chances of winning and the number of prizes at stake
• As the games grow, so will the community and the prize values
• We plan to offer some fun non-SBD prizes soon
• There will be even more unique games to challenge your photo skills, photo knowledge and general creativity.

Thank you for joining us on this fun ride as we look forward to Week 3 of the Photo Games!

Before that, we shall see which Photo Star won this week (fingers crossed for me)

Also feel free to nominate who you'd like to see competing as a Photo Star in future weeks.