September Contest Results

Last night I attended the local club’s monthly competition meeting with the theme being sports. For the contest, I entered 1 color print, 2 color digital images, and 1 black and white digital image. All 4 could be seen in my last post. I figured I had a fighting chance with all of the submissions, I especially loved the photo of the girls sling-shotting a t-shirt at Trash Panda stadium and figured it was a shoe-in. I was wrong about that one, but I did really well. In the end, I walked away with two 1st place photos.

I will say judging was a bit more consistent this time around, but still I found issues with the criteria. A big bugaboo with this judge was cropping near a joint, such as a foot, hand, etc. Yet there were images that slipped through and placed. And there were technical issues such as sharpness that was commented on, yet my soccer photo below is not tack sharp. Then, for me, always be concerned with edges, look at the edges, make sure nothing is creeping into the frame that could be distracting of not nice to look at. For example, all of the rocks in my boogie boarder image below are black, except for that tiny strip of sand in the right upper 3rd of the image. I could have cloned that out. Anyway, I will stop ranting about judging and just roll with it.

So, on the year, that gives me 24 points with 10 wins. The club gives 5 points for 1st, 4 for 2nd, 3 for 3rd, and then 1 point for an honorable mention. Wins are given for each photo that places in the competition. So, for my 2 years in the club, I am at 20 wins which elevates me to “Fellow”. Now, it is all points based with Bronze, Silver, Gold, and then Master levels achieved with points.

Oddly enough, I finished last year with 24 points and 10 wins. I have two more months to hopefully eclipse that number and get closer to becoming a Bronze Fellow. Anyway, here are my two 1st place entries.