On Mon, Sep 19, 2011 at 7:08 AM, David J Brooks <[email protected]> wrote: > http://www.caughtinmotion.com/2011-markhamfair/album/index.html > > In my markham fair post, i mentioned that one of the jays shots, 6037, > the landing one, is a bit soft, Paul calls in motion blur.:-) This is > the one i like for the wild bird class, but am bothered by this bit of > softness, which does not really show up at web sizes so i just noticed > it when i printed it out. > > Question to the judges on the list, would this be a deal breaker or > not. The concept of the photo is jays in flight, but would the > softness or motion blur be enough to say, "nope, try again next year > Brooksie". My other choices are #'s 6034 and 6057 in the above link. > > Thoughts???
Based on the show I judged recently, whether it seems "a little soft" and whether that is going to count against it depends a lot on a) what it is up against in the competition b) what talks to the viewpoint of the judge A certain level of technical merit/competenchy has to be there in the photo, but once there things get trickier. I had several cases of very good photographs that were competing for a prize in this recent exhibition. My overall take on what I felt had more merit had to do with the level at which a particular photograph communicated a message to me, the viewer, and in most cases those were easy to rank in a category. However, in two cases there were several equally appealing photographs competing for the same award, and in those cases I had to reach to specific technical merits to rank one over the other. If you're trying to portray "jays in flight", the motion blur here is a little much. If, on the other hand, you're looking to portray "food desirable to jays swooping in," it becomes more approachable. How exactly you would cue the viewer as to that second intent is an exercise left to the reader... ;-) -- Godfrey godfreydigiorgi.posterous.com -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
