Sunrise or Sunset
Last night was the competition meeting for February’s monthly competition meeting with the theme being sunrise or sunset. I submitted a few nice choices I worked on with my friend Seth. He helped select and critique, pushing back when it needed more, or less. He was such a help in the selection process.
In the end, I submitted one black and white digital entry, 2 color digital entries, and 1 color print. When the dust settled, the judge awarded an honorable mention to my photo of a pier at Guntersville Lake after the remnants of a hurricane had blown through. The sky was vibrant and I caught a sunstar.
Once again, lots of issues with the judging criteria. I am not even sure where to start. Almost laughable at this point. The judge preferred panoramic images, even when cropping out interesting foreground elements. All the light needed to be on the left side, not centered either. It had to be a photo you would want to hang on your wall. By my count, of the current images on the website’s competition page, we have the sun on the left in 5 images, on the right in 6 images, and in the center on 6 images. The prints were not included in this tally, but there were several smack dab in the middle of the scene.
The judge’s obsession with panoramic cropping was over the top. However, if the pic was portrait orientation, cropping was not spoken about. There was a photo of some boats in a marina, nice photo, but the bottom 1/3 of the photo was dead space. There was no reflection, no light, nothing. It should have been cropped. Maybe to a square print. It placed in the print categories. Then there was a photo that finished in the top 3 in color that was just plain boring. The criteria he placed on other photos did not apply to this one. It had an uninteresting foreground, sun was in the right side of the frame. Nothing interesting in the frame at all.
The inconsistent judging criteria drives me crazy. If the judges like something better, just say so. I can take that. But when they throw out all of these must haves and then ignore them for certain photos, it makes me want to stop going to the club meetings. Anyway, I will stop my complaining to show off my honorable mention photo.
