2018 Winners
The 2018 contest had two divisions. Adults were 18 years old or out of high school. Youth were 18 or under, or still in school. The theme of the contest was "Natural Wonders: Big and Small." Contest judge Bill Smith selected a 1st place and 2nd place winner in each division, as well as several finalists. His general comments about the contest are posted below.
1st Place Adult: "Playground" - by Bence Mate, Pusztaszer, Hungary
2nd Place Adult Division: "Between Bubbles" - by Ruben Perez Novo, Naron - Coruña, Spain
1st Place Youth Division: "Cactus Patterns" - by Zachary W Gray, Harlingen, Texas
2nd Place Youth Division: "Macaques" - by Charlotte McEvoy, New York, New York
Notes from the Judge
Judge's comments
First, a big thank you to all the entrants and for helping support the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, New York. There was an incredible talent shown in many of the images which, while making judging hard, also made it enjoyable to study and reflect upon how they might have been created, why the photographer selected the chosen perspective, lens choice and camera settings.
Viewpoint, lighting, compositional placement of the image elements were essentials successfully used by over half the entrants. Good photography is not accidental and there is an art to Nature observation. Careful digital darkroom work, which when well done is not seen, puts a final touch on the last set of culling images and the results showed the work lavished on them.
The youth finalists could very well be in the adult category. There is a curiosity depicted in many youth category images that is lessened as one become adults; this is an area we adults need to rediscover. We adults sometimes analyze too much!
Contests get us out & about, get us to see deeper as we want to enter only our best work. Contests get us outside and enjoying Nature, spending time and observing. Hopefully, the contest was a great learning experience for the entrants; I know it was for the judge!
----------------
Judging is never easy and this year's single category means flora goes up against fauna, against landscapes & against abstract. How to compare entries from such diverse categories? I edited the above categories down to the top 2 then looked at the those top twos against the criteria of impact and creativity. In fact I printed the finalists and lived with them on a display wall for several days, looking at them & rearranging them in an order.
Impact is what gets the viewer's attention. Composition keeps the viewer looking at the image with a roving eye. Creativity is depicting a subject in a interesting way and makes the viewer think: "Wow, that's a neat viewpoint" & "That's a great take on a bird portrait".
Judging Criteria
My judging criteria are similar to those of the past judges and include:
Impact - This is what makes one look at any artwork. When you see a wall of 30 images, something draws you to a few right away, that is impact.
Composition - How the image elements keep the viewer interested once you've grabbed their attention. It often helps to think of a scene as shapes, light & color patterns and assembling them. Even bird shots can be helped by adjusting position to move a loud background color shape out of the way. Composition is given the most points.
Related & within composition are balance, use of space, cropping, camera vantage point and so on. How is light used and could it be enhanced in the digital darkroom. Think what makes you view an image again & again.
Is there a story - does the image make the viewer "wonder why" and want to think more about an image. For example, birds & critters doing something is more of a story than a stationary portrait.
Cropping - Crop to eliminate what doesn't support/add to the subject; but don't get too tight as the subject needs to breathe.
Use of background - Camera position & camera settings strongly affect how the background can support a subject or draw attention away from the subject. Hiding a bright or highly colored background item will keep that from drawing attention from the subject. Smaller depth-of-field and/or using a longer focal length lens may help a flower shot stand out. At the same time the background puts the subject in its environment so a balance is needed and it is the photographer's duty & choice to depict it to the best interest of the subject.
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Here are the things that eliminated half of all entries. Keeping an eye on these will improve your photography.
Cropping - This was the #1 issue. Hot or bright colored spots, blank areas, contrasty background areas, lines that draw one attention away from the subject or even out of the image have got to go. They detract and pull attention from the subject. How much background to show is a critical decision.
Sometimes little clips off a bird's wing, butterfly or flower create lines that lead the viewer away. Shot too close? Maybe make a tight crop look deliberate by clipping even more off. Images with small foregrounds are easy to crop too far. The subject needs some room. Be careful and take time with final cropping.
Busy background - This just competes with the subject. If you spend more time looking at the background for what it is and not as it supports the subject, perhaps reconsider viewpoint, lens and camera settings.
Competing subjects - The sun way off to the right side with a shore way off to the left or a neat bug in the center with large bright flowers off to both sides are examples where the viewer's eye bounces from one side to the other in a frame and doesn't land anywhere. Spend time viewing your images over a period of days. Even better is to print you image and live with them and see if they have lasting viewing interest. I printed the finalists and had them in my digital darkroom/workshop where I could look at them every time I was there and rearranged them in a selection order.
Lighting - does it support your subject or, for example, does harsh sunlight create spots that draw attention to them. Harsh lighting is tough to work with.
Focus - Focus is critical in bird, wildlife & macro photography. If the focus is a bit off, it may make a great shot for a wall in your home but will probably not cut it in a contest.
Other issues include tilted horizons without a reason, off-color, color casts, odd tones, impossible colors & over-saturation. Better specimens (don't shoot a tattered common butterfly) is an issue. Also retouching sensor spots and color noise in plain backgrounds are two items that unnecessarily draw attention from the subject and yet easily corrected.
----------
A great resource to improve your photography is the 80+ podcast videos of Craft & Vision channel on Youtube. Host David Duchemin explores ways to improve expression, feeling and the viewer's experience of an image. Rarely will you see gear discussed but it is more on how to get a greater understanding of vision-driven photography.
Also pull off the free ebooks & resources on the craftandvision.com website - they're great.
It's been said that photography is a journey without a destination. We are out there for the joy it brings us. May it be so.
Congratulations to the winners & finalists - well deserved. Thanks to everyone that entered and keep being inspired by photographing our natural world.
Bill Smith
First, a big thank you to all the entrants and for helping support the Audubon Community Nature Center in Jamestown, New York. There was an incredible talent shown in many of the images which, while making judging hard, also made it enjoyable to study and reflect upon how they might have been created, why the photographer selected the chosen perspective, lens choice and camera settings.
Viewpoint, lighting, compositional placement of the image elements were essentials successfully used by over half the entrants. Good photography is not accidental and there is an art to Nature observation. Careful digital darkroom work, which when well done is not seen, puts a final touch on the last set of culling images and the results showed the work lavished on them.
The youth finalists could very well be in the adult category. There is a curiosity depicted in many youth category images that is lessened as one become adults; this is an area we adults need to rediscover. We adults sometimes analyze too much!
Contests get us out & about, get us to see deeper as we want to enter only our best work. Contests get us outside and enjoying Nature, spending time and observing. Hopefully, the contest was a great learning experience for the entrants; I know it was for the judge!
----------------
Judging is never easy and this year's single category means flora goes up against fauna, against landscapes & against abstract. How to compare entries from such diverse categories? I edited the above categories down to the top 2 then looked at the those top twos against the criteria of impact and creativity. In fact I printed the finalists and lived with them on a display wall for several days, looking at them & rearranging them in an order.
Impact is what gets the viewer's attention. Composition keeps the viewer looking at the image with a roving eye. Creativity is depicting a subject in a interesting way and makes the viewer think: "Wow, that's a neat viewpoint" & "That's a great take on a bird portrait".
Judging Criteria
My judging criteria are similar to those of the past judges and include:
Impact - This is what makes one look at any artwork. When you see a wall of 30 images, something draws you to a few right away, that is impact.
Composition - How the image elements keep the viewer interested once you've grabbed their attention. It often helps to think of a scene as shapes, light & color patterns and assembling them. Even bird shots can be helped by adjusting position to move a loud background color shape out of the way. Composition is given the most points.
Related & within composition are balance, use of space, cropping, camera vantage point and so on. How is light used and could it be enhanced in the digital darkroom. Think what makes you view an image again & again.
Is there a story - does the image make the viewer "wonder why" and want to think more about an image. For example, birds & critters doing something is more of a story than a stationary portrait.
Cropping - Crop to eliminate what doesn't support/add to the subject; but don't get too tight as the subject needs to breathe.
Use of background - Camera position & camera settings strongly affect how the background can support a subject or draw attention away from the subject. Hiding a bright or highly colored background item will keep that from drawing attention from the subject. Smaller depth-of-field and/or using a longer focal length lens may help a flower shot stand out. At the same time the background puts the subject in its environment so a balance is needed and it is the photographer's duty & choice to depict it to the best interest of the subject.
-----------
Here are the things that eliminated half of all entries. Keeping an eye on these will improve your photography.
Cropping - This was the #1 issue. Hot or bright colored spots, blank areas, contrasty background areas, lines that draw one attention away from the subject or even out of the image have got to go. They detract and pull attention from the subject. How much background to show is a critical decision.
Sometimes little clips off a bird's wing, butterfly or flower create lines that lead the viewer away. Shot too close? Maybe make a tight crop look deliberate by clipping even more off. Images with small foregrounds are easy to crop too far. The subject needs some room. Be careful and take time with final cropping.
Busy background - This just competes with the subject. If you spend more time looking at the background for what it is and not as it supports the subject, perhaps reconsider viewpoint, lens and camera settings.
Competing subjects - The sun way off to the right side with a shore way off to the left or a neat bug in the center with large bright flowers off to both sides are examples where the viewer's eye bounces from one side to the other in a frame and doesn't land anywhere. Spend time viewing your images over a period of days. Even better is to print you image and live with them and see if they have lasting viewing interest. I printed the finalists and had them in my digital darkroom/workshop where I could look at them every time I was there and rearranged them in a selection order.
Lighting - does it support your subject or, for example, does harsh sunlight create spots that draw attention to them. Harsh lighting is tough to work with.
Focus - Focus is critical in bird, wildlife & macro photography. If the focus is a bit off, it may make a great shot for a wall in your home but will probably not cut it in a contest.
Other issues include tilted horizons without a reason, off-color, color casts, odd tones, impossible colors & over-saturation. Better specimens (don't shoot a tattered common butterfly) is an issue. Also retouching sensor spots and color noise in plain backgrounds are two items that unnecessarily draw attention from the subject and yet easily corrected.
----------
A great resource to improve your photography is the 80+ podcast videos of Craft & Vision channel on Youtube. Host David Duchemin explores ways to improve expression, feeling and the viewer's experience of an image. Rarely will you see gear discussed but it is more on how to get a greater understanding of vision-driven photography.
Also pull off the free ebooks & resources on the craftandvision.com website - they're great.
It's been said that photography is a journey without a destination. We are out there for the joy it brings us. May it be so.
Congratulations to the winners & finalists - well deserved. Thanks to everyone that entered and keep being inspired by photographing our natural world.
Bill Smith
Finalists - Adults
Click a thumbnail to see a slide show.
Finalists - Youth
Click a thumbnail to see a slide show.
2018 Judge - Bill Smith
Bill Smith is a Buffalo, New York, area native and has been active in the arts community for over 35 years. The natural surroundings are a world beyond photographs and words. Bill is motivated by intangibles such as a desire to understand our natural world; to sense the variables of time, light and form; to become involved in the presence of a place -- its mystical forces. These spur his creativity and encourage him to slow down in order to see more clearly. His intent is that of an explorer, to be always curious of our natural environment.
Bill often tries to include important elements toward the corners and edges as well as the central area of his photographs. This more lively composition allows the eye to roam around, curiously exploring and questioning, and makes the viewer pause to consider what has been excluded.
A mechanical engineering background provides a techy basis that is matched by Bill's love of the outdoors, the intimate landscape as well as flora, fauna, rural scenes and architectural details. Scenes with humor and the unanticipated moment are particularly dear. Being absolutely captured by the art of photography, Bill has been taking pictures his entire life and grows to love photography more and more each day, finding balance and peace through it. For 20+ years he used medium format and 4x5 view cameras.
The view camera, especially, forces one to carefully consider the scene and adjust one's viewpoint until the subject is making a conversation back to the photographer. Bill listens to what it says and tries to come to a meeting point of the image’s idea and what Bill feels its story is. At $2.50 per negative and $4 per chrome, one doesn't shoot willy-nilly! The last 11 years have seen him switch to 35mm digital, still using the patience learned from the film days.
Bill has exhibited his work in and has survived over 360 outdoor shows / street fairs since 1982 in six states in the northeast. His wish is that his, and all, photos spark viewers toward self-discovery, to go out and examine the original landscape with a fresh vision, a heightened awareness of our natural world, and to have an ever-hopeful anticipation of whatever may be around the bend.
Bill often tries to include important elements toward the corners and edges as well as the central area of his photographs. This more lively composition allows the eye to roam around, curiously exploring and questioning, and makes the viewer pause to consider what has been excluded.
A mechanical engineering background provides a techy basis that is matched by Bill's love of the outdoors, the intimate landscape as well as flora, fauna, rural scenes and architectural details. Scenes with humor and the unanticipated moment are particularly dear. Being absolutely captured by the art of photography, Bill has been taking pictures his entire life and grows to love photography more and more each day, finding balance and peace through it. For 20+ years he used medium format and 4x5 view cameras.
The view camera, especially, forces one to carefully consider the scene and adjust one's viewpoint until the subject is making a conversation back to the photographer. Bill listens to what it says and tries to come to a meeting point of the image’s idea and what Bill feels its story is. At $2.50 per negative and $4 per chrome, one doesn't shoot willy-nilly! The last 11 years have seen him switch to 35mm digital, still using the patience learned from the film days.
Bill has exhibited his work in and has survived over 360 outdoor shows / street fairs since 1982 in six states in the northeast. His wish is that his, and all, photos spark viewers toward self-discovery, to go out and examine the original landscape with a fresh vision, a heightened awareness of our natural world, and to have an ever-hopeful anticipation of whatever may be around the bend.
