Saturday, August 9, 2008

Summer Fair Entries

So, every year I enter some photos in the Davis County fair. I'm not going to lie, I have a love/hate relationship with the judges. They really make me angry. Last year, I entered one of my favorite photos ever, but someone gave me the wrong ribbon (first place was clearly circled on the paper). A few years ago, I didn't have a single photo place, but I somehow managed to win the special prize for the best macro photograph of the entire fair. The prize was given out by an independent judge from the Nikon corporation. For the record, one of the judges told me that he didn't like my use of depth of field in the photo. I think I'll dig around on the hard drive and find a copy of it...


In any case, that's all in the past. This year, I'm pretty proud of my entries. Here we go!

The final result for this photo was a third place. The judges said they liked my execution of the image, but that the cropping wasn't tight enough. They wished I had cut and inch or so off the right side so that the half leaf wasn't there to detract from the composition of the picture. Very sound advice, if you ask me.


This photo did not place. I was told that the focus wasn't sharp enough, and that the lighting was too flat. Also, it might have been too much of a close up.



This photo received a second place. As I predicted, the judges wanted to see a longer depth of field. One judge told me that the photo was "heavily unbalanced" with the left side of the bottle out of focus like it was. He suggested showing both sides of the bottle to add more balance to the image. I was also told, even though I think it is a cop out, that images are judged on subject recognition, and that it was difficult to determine what this photo was. What does it look like, fool?