Being a relatively new member of the Norwich and District Photographic Society (NDPS), I have just had my first try at entering a competition, namely the first round of POTY (“potty”) aka Photographer of the Year competition.
The themes in round one were minimalism in colour and a free choice.
For the minimalism in colour theme, I entered the following shot from Caister which I named Turbine Calm.
The judge liked the shot especially the composition and the colour tones but wasn’t convinced the four turbines met the minimalism brief. They said they would’ve preferred a single turbine. Other comments included that the seawater was too bright. Nevertheless, I was awarded 8.5/10 and very pleased with that.
It’s useful to hear the feedback from a qualified judge. Also interesting was that during post processing, I noticed far too late that the sky had a smudged effect which I should’ve removed but didn’t notice until it was too late. The judge didn’t notice or chose not to comment. Also, I confess I did brighten the seawater quite a lot to enhance the minimalist look but I agree with the judge that it’s made too wide a contrast between to the sea and the sky. I’d like to re-edit this image with more balance and it will go on my website gallery as I do like it the shot.
For my free choice, I’d left it far too late to think about what to enter. In the end, I picked the shot below and named it Beedy Eyes.
The judge didn’t like this one at all and I was cringing when they said my title implied eyes but the shot was mostly flowers. They said I should’ve cropped in much further to feature the eyes, if my sensor could take it. I’d like to re-edit this shot to see if I can crop closer in and maintain the image quality and if so tone down that saturation and re-publish. If it’s good enough, another one for the gallery maybe.
One further critique followed in the saturation of the green background which the judge described as “Amazonian”! Since I made a real error between title and image, I was awarded a 6.5/10, the lowest score of the evening. To say I’ve learnt a lesson the hard way would be an understatement.
So, overall I scored 15/20 (75%) which is pretty good for my first attempt. Onwards and upwards as they say, and I have to say the judge’s comments were all valid and I’ve learnt a lot.
Overall, I enjoyed the evening seeing members efforts and listening to the judge critiquing each one. It also reminded me that aside from various photographic technicalities and power of an image, it is art we’re talking about and one element is always going to be personal taste. This appears to come into play once the five shortlisted images are revisited to pick a winner.
I shall post again when Round 2 comes up.