Don't Judge Me!

Last week I had the unusual experience of submitting some pictures to the camera club in a competition round.

Rule 1: If you're allowed three pictures in each section, submit three pictures; don't nancy about.
Rule 2: Check what "black and white" actually means. Apparently black and white means black and white, not monochrome. Hence two of my three black and white prints got shunted into the colour section.

This one of Eli "Paperboy" Reid didn't even get a mention. The other (Smoke) grabbed a third place in the General colour competion.





The judge ignored my favourite pic of a set of digeridoos, and spent a long time talking about a pic I'd submitted of a Parisian nightclub. "Eye catching" was how he described it before going on to highlight the fact that there were about a million close-up shots possible within this one frame. Which I agree with, although my only thought at the time was "eye-catching."


But some success was had - I scooped the b&w general 1st place for an over processed picutre of Scrabo Tower, and my wee pic of the binoculars at the top of the Eiffel Tower got second place in the general colour section






One of the things the judge said which struck a chord with me was "what am I trying to say" or "what am I trying to communicate" with this picture. With Scrabo Tower, I was initially trying to copy an HDR shot I'd seen of the tower in a market stall selling "local landmark" photos. As I got into playing with the image, I began to realise that it reminded me of pictures I'd seen in bibles when I was a kid (blame the Free Presbyterians for that one) of these big, imposing stone towers from the old testament. This is the least scary shot I ended up with and the one which looks most like Scrabo Tower itself.


Anyhow, it was a fun time and a learning experience; constructive criticism always received gratefully, and some new ideas lodging in the back of my head.