Round 3

Last month saw the third (and final) round of the Open Subject Digitial Projected Image Competition (blimey, what a mouthful) at Camera Club.  As you may or may not remember, I had done surprisingly well in Rounds 1 and 2, and before the start of Round 3, was lying in second place overall by a single point.

The guy in first place at the end of Round 2 now lives overseas, but because he was such a valued member of the club for many years, he has been granted a special 'overseas membership' to enable him to continue to partake in Club contests.  We recently had a presentation he'd prepared and sent over via the interweb - the man takes stunning pictures.  As I sat and watched his presentation, I was pretty sure there was no way I would ever be able to overtake him in the final round of the competition.

Anyway, the week before the competition, I handed in my memory stick containing my three images.  Nobody seemed to know much about the judge on that evening so it was anyone's guess what sort of images he'd like.

My first image that evening was this one:

 

(I love that the new Blogger can make super big pictures!)

The Judge said it was pleasing, he liked the way that the yellow flowers (it was actually ragwort) were in varying degrees of sharpness, or not as the case may be.  He liked the positioning of the bee within the frame but said it wasn't as sharp as another shot that evening of an insect. (It was one of a fly, which was really terrific).  He gave the image 17 points out of a possible 20.

My second image was this one:

The Judge said it was a very sensual image, and that the author (that's what they call the person who 'took' the image) should perhaps send it to an ice cream manufacturer as he found it made him think of ice cream ... and want to eat some!  He liked the way that although we knew it was a rose, it was quite abstract because we couldn't see the 'outside' of the flower 'head'.  He asked to keep this image back for further consideration later.

My third image for this competition was this one:

The judge liked that the squirrel was so nice and sharp, and that we could see texture in the tree.  He also liked the out of focus background.  However, he felt the lefthand third of the image was perhaps a bit redundant and said he would have preferred it with a more severe crop of that side.  (Ironically, I did consider that myself, but when I tried it, I felt the picture lacked balance.  I couldn't say that of course, as one just has to sit and listen.)  He gave this image - just like the first one - 17 points.

After he had marked all the images, he asked to see again the ones he had kept back for further consideration.  There were around 9 of them that evening (out of a total of 60 images) and these were the ones which would be getting the highest mark(s).  Unfortunately, I had to leave before he got to my rose shot, to go and pick up No.1 from somewhere, so I didn't get to hear any further comments he might have made about it.  A friend from Camera Club very kindly messaged me when he got home to let me know the Judge had awarded it 19 points, which gave me a grand total of 53 points.  Again! I got the same score for all three rounds of the competition: 9 different images, in front of 3 different judges.  I had come third on the night.

I assumed that the chap from overseas was the outright winner of the competition, but no. It turns out that another guy came from behind us both, with some particularly beautiful images, and took the winner's spot.  Congratulations to PK - he had some fantastic shots.

As for me, well I wasn't too unhappy with the final outcome.  This was my very first attempt at photographic competition, and to have achieved 53 points out of a possible 60 on three separate occasions seemed like a pretty good result to me.  For a while there, it seemed like I might actually win the darned thing - which would have been rather shocking to me.  But in the end I came second behind PK ... by one point!  The overseas blokey came third - two points behind me.

All in all, it was a very enjoyable experience, and I am more than encouraged enough to enter it again next year - assuming I have some images which I feel are good enough.  Thanks to all my bloggy friends for their support - it was very much appreciated - x.

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