Round 2

Earlier this month the local Camera Club staged Round 2 of their open (ie no set subject) Digital Image competition. If you remember, Round 1 back in February left me a tad gobsmacked. After doing so well in Round 1, I felt I had to submit three good images for this next stage, and as usual agonised over which three images to put forward. I have a folder on my poota entitled 'Possibles' which are shots I consider possibly good enough for competition. There were nine images in that folder, and once again I'd like to thank the friend who helped me decide on which three to choose.

As a relative newbie at this whole Camera Club thing, I have never encountered the Judges before - they are all independent; have years of experience in photography, and of course their own opinion on how things 'should' be. The guy who was judging this particular competition announced at the start of the evening that he "hates wasted pixels", and that by the end of the evening, we would be tired of hearing him say he wanted to chop bits off images to make them 'stronger'. It's an interesting viewpoint, but I am of the opinion that sometimes 'empty space' makes an image better and/or more appealing precisely because of that space. I guess I am looking at images with an 'artistic' eye rather than a technical one. And at the end of the day, we all like what we like, don't we?

Anyway, off we went, and with a total of 75 images that evening, the club was making him work for his fee. My first image was this one:-

I had been after a shot of a robin for months, when I finally saw this little chap, singing away on a branch up on the Ridgeway earlier this year. As you will see, there is quite a bit of 'space' in this picture, which I like. The judge, however, wasn't keen, and hated the branch 'growing out of the robin's head'. I can see what he means, and perhaps should have cloned out that branch; but because it clearly linked to itself lower down in the image, I felt it had 'context'. He gave this picture 16 points out of a possible 20.

My second image was this:-

Which is me doing what I love to do - getting my lens right inside a flower (in this instance a pretty pink tulip) and having a really good look at what's in there! I have to force myself to take 'ordinary' shots, as time after time I gravitate back to macro shots. I find them so rewarding, and enjoy seeing parts of anything taken slightly out of context of the 'whole'.

As you can see, there are no so-called 'wasted pixels' in this shot, and the Judge liked that. He kept it back for later consideration. (Judges sometimes do that with images they particularly like, so they can come back to them to reevaluate them. It also allows them to look at what they view as the 'best' images all together and thus assess their qualities against other 'good' images).

My third image of that evening was my personal favourite of the three:-

Georgie-cat giving me one of her best 'what the hell are you doing, you stupid woman?' expressions. Again there are a few 'wasted pixels' down that left hand side, although the Judge didn't specifically mention those. He said it was a nice portrait, and that the Black & White treatment suited it very well. He gave it 17 points out of a possible 20. Of course I wanted him to exclaim what a beautiful cat she is, but he didn't.

By this stage of the evening, this Judge had suggested chopping bits off tops, bottoms and sides of at least two thirds of all the images he'd seen. Do you remember, Dear Reader, when you were at school, if one of the teachers was being quite stern, and you got the giggles? Well the chap I was sitting beside (let's call him Dave, as that's his name) and I began to chuckle about half way through the evening each time 'cropping' of images was mentioned. By the end, my sides ached with trying to stifle giggles so the Judge couldn't hear us laughing at him. We (sarcastically) decided that this particular Judge would most have liked to see a tiny image of 9 pixels square with no two pixels of the same colour.

After all three images from everyone had been seen, the Judge went back to the images he'd 'kept back'. I should think there were around 9 of them (including my pink tulip). Four were given 19 marks out of 20, and five were given top 'score' of 20 points ... luckily for me, my shot was one of those five. So I ended the evening on 53 points - the same score I got for Round 1 back in February. This time though, I was in fourth place for the evening. I don't know where it places me overall after two rounds as the scores haven't made their way to the club website yet. I do know that the bloke with whom I was 'leading' scored one point more than me in Round 2 - so he will be one point ahead of me for Round 3 (which is in September). One of the people who came first or second that evening might have leap-frogged us both into first place overall though.

I didn't warm to the Judge that night. I didn't agree with his opinions on many of the images. He gave high scores to pictures to which I didn't feel drawn; and gave low scores to pictures I loved. As I've said before, at the end of the day it's all down to personal taste!

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