General POTM June Discussion Topic

[paradise]

Guess who won the General POTM!!!

Congratulation to all who entered the find photos. PERSONALLY I thought Teresa's Crow should have won. Congrats on an excellent photo. I also think that Ted's Birches was an outstanding shot. Very lively and pure beauty.

But, I will take it :)

http://aquatic-photography.com/forum/contests/0605n/02.jpg

Now let's discuss the photos in the contest. Dont just congrat the winner (but dont forget to :) ), but talk about what you thought was special in the contest and why.

OH, and dont forget to submit for the July POTM!!!!

[Obliviou$]

Teresa's crow deserved this one, but yours was in a good second :) It's a great shot, and it's technical right etc. Why it didn't get my 10 is because it's kind of over done. But otherwise it's a great shot!

Congrats Ed :)

[squidfish]

Congratulations Ed. Great picture of potentially difficult exposure showing good detail. My only comment on the picture would be its a bit 'wet' and think it would have looked better with less water droplets. The other submissions were of a good standard and varied in subject. I also liked the crow as it had a sinster Omen / Hitchcock aspect to the shot enhanced by a nice grain effect. Also liked the blurring done around the sleeping lion, a nice touch.


cheers

Rich

[hir0]

congrats Ed. that's an excellent shot man u deserve it. well done.

[JerseyJay]

Well…. Here is my honest feedback.

This may sound a bit harsh but I feel I can spell it out b/c this is a photography forum, not just another Photo Contest on various forum.

This is indeed a nice picture but this is about it, a nice picture. There is a difference between nicely taken picture vs. not as nicely but with great composition and meaning behind it. I think "Crow" photograph was hands down a winner at least in my humble opinion. Ed picture shows great technique (*dark background) and excellent sharpness but unfortunately there is nothing else in that picture that gets my attention when compared to "Crow" picture. Not to say that flower pictures are useless and can't win the contest. I think "Field of tulips" photograph shows exactly how flower / composition photograph should look like. If top flower wasn't cut, that could be a winner as well.

Another thing that we should mention is the amount of votes we had. I'm the admin so I get to see behind the door actions. Not all pictures got the same number of votes. Ed's photograph got 32 but "Fall Aspens" got only 28, why is that ? I think some of our members follow "impulse voting" and they only review pictures which they really like at that moment only and they skip the rest.

Please try to consider all submissions. Please think about composition, meaning, creativity when judging photographs.
Great job all and congratulations to Ed again !!!

[Tony7683]

Congrats Ed! I voted for the crow though :P

As far as voting, maybe the path should be laid out for you? As in you can't finish voting until you vote for them all somehow?

Just a thought.

Tony

[tlemetry]

Congrats Ed! I liked your wet rose a lot! The choices was extrordinarily difficult as they are all winners in my book.

Thank you everyone for the encouraging words on my cross. Real exciting for my first photo contest!
I have only been shooting for 2 weeks when I got that one. I really didnt expect to come close.

T

[Ibn]

Congrats Ed.

I do however agree with what Jay said. I gave it the same score as the trees, followed by the crow and tulips shot (both of these got the same score).

[hir0]

i noticed when it comes to the general POTM contest - people vote for the images that "catch their eye" more than they take time to study the composition. but hey, it's all in good fun! i also noticed some images have more views than others, and i wondered if it was that they only vote on the ones they like the most. i agree with Tony, if there is a way to have the vote go through and refresh to the next page - that might help out. I dunno..

[tjudy]

This is the first general contest I participated in (Fall Aspens). That picture was actually taken in the Fall of 2003.

I voted the rose picture as my top choice specifically because of the professionalism (in my opinion... I am by no means a professional) of the set up. I do not think that I could accomplish as good an image as that right now.

The crow is a great composition... I think I would have titled it 'Nevermore'. The drakness of the image turned me off a bit. I wish that the sky behind the subject were a bit lighter to pormote more contrast.

I like that the first tulip in the field of tulips is cut off. It gives me the feeling of being there, lying in the field looking through a forest of flowers. I wish that the focal depth were greater, however, as that would have carried my minds attention deeper into the field. I think the images blurs too soon. I would also have liked to have seen this shot with light coming from a lower angle, possibly low enough to eluminate the sides of the tulips rather than the tops (which places the sides ot the flowers in shadow).

Congratulations to the winners, and everyone who participated. This is fun!

As for the debate over the voting... I do not know why some images get more votes than others. I gave them all a ranking. I like that you can give the same score to different images. If the process can be changed, we could come up with a few different formulae and try a different one each month until we come up with the one we like the best (sure to be better than the college football BCS). We could try a system where you have to rank the images 10 - 1 (10 points being the best), and you have to vote for every image. The picture with the most points wins.

[alanhill]

I didn't vote for the morning glory - I thought it looked mighty like a rose :lol:

Alan

[paradise]

I will talk to the software designer about doing it so that it would go to the next photo, but it IS built in right now, you can vote, then go "next" and so on.

The 1-10 system does not work ,because you may have two images with the same rank. It's not an absolute system of 1-10.

[Andreas Werth]

Please don´t worry about different numbers of votes for different photos. The voting script calculates the average sum out of all votes for a particular photo.
Example: a photo with two "8s" will of course beat a photo with three "7s".

I also don´t think it will help to force all users to vote for every photo! If one doesn´t like to vote for a photo (or to deal with a photo) he won´t be a good voter if he has to vote, if you know what i mean - he will vote halfhearted.

The more people vote, the more detailed the score will be. So, my aim would be to stimulate more voters! 130 views for Hir0s winning photo isn´t that much for a big board like this one.

Perhaps we can also solve the Firefox problem: you can´t see the potm links after you click for example: "POTM main page" on the portal or "POTM HOME" in the navigation bar above (it is on the right, unvisible side of the browser). Perhaps some users simply don´t find the voting page.

[tjudy]

What happens if one photo gets 5 votes of '9' while another photo get only two votes of a '9' and a '10'. The photo with fewer votes gets the higher average... that does not seem right. That means that if people only voted high points for the pictures they like, but do not rate the other photos as well (presumably lower), it is possible to get a picture fewer people like as a winner.

I think that finding a way for each picture to get a rating from each voter is a good idea. I would not be too worried about two pictures having the same score. So what is two picture tie for a position... they would both deserve to win.

[Andreas Werth]

What happens if one photo gets 5 votes of '9' while another photo get only two votes of a '9' and a '10'. The photo with fewer votes gets the higher average... that does not seem right.
Hi Ted,
it does seem right to me. But this is not a good example, because we don´t have this 3:5 relation!
We are talking about a difference of perhaps (if at all) 10% of votes if you compare different photos.
The problem is getting smaller and smaller the more people participate voting.

[t_chelle16]

Well…. Here is my honest feedback.

This may sound a bit harsh but I feel I can spell it out b/c this is a photography forum, not just another Photo Contest on various forum.

This is indeed a nice picture but this is about it, a nice picture. There is a difference between nicely taken picture vs. not as nicely but with great composition and meaning behind it. I think "Crow" photograph was hands down a winner at least in my humble opinion. Ed picture shows great technique (*dark background) and excellent sharpness but unfortunately there is nothing else in that picture that gets my attention when compared to "Crow" picture. Not to say that flower pictures are useless and can't win the contest. I think "Field of tulips" photograph shows exactly how flower / composition photograph should look like. If top flower wasn't cut, that could be a winner as well.


I agree. Although your photo is a technically a very nice picture (good balance, use of space, lighting, in focus, etc), it really doesn't convey any emotion (at least not for me) and because of that, I really don't consider it artistic (it would make a beautiful computer desktop, calendar or greeting card, though). I also think just plain, simple, flower portraits are a bit overdone. I've looked through the entrants of a lot of photo contests and it seems like nearly 1/4 of them are flower portraits (same goes for sunsets, mountain/lake landscapes, and insect close ups). Again, not that it's a bad pic, it just wasn't original enough for me to want to give it a #1 score.

As for some of the other pics, in the one with the lion, the artificial blurring of everything but the lion really turned me off. I can kind of see the effect he/she was going for, but I don't think it worked too well for that particular shot. I think it would have been much better with just a tighter crop on the lion.

The two things that intrigue me most in photography is unusual lighting (especially if the shadows and highlights play off of and balance eachother nicely) and unusual perspectives/angles. The latter is why I like the tulip picture.

-Chelle

[JerseyJay]

Hey Chelle,

This is not my photo :)

[t_chelle16]

I know. I was agreeing with you then addressing Paradise about his photo.

-Chelle

[RazorBlade]

Congrats to Ed on winning the POTM!

Actually, I agree with Jay that the Crow photo is technically more attractive. I also loved hir0's landscape photography.

But then again, it's a public forum and if the public loves Ed's tulip, Ed did something right! :D

[benny]

http://aquatic-photography.com/forum/contests/0605n/08.jpg

This IR photo would have been my pick of the lot, followed by the crow.

Congrats to the winners.

Cheers,

[Obliviou$]

This IR photo would have been my pick of the lot, followed by the crow.

Congrats to the winners.

Cheers,

Now we can't have hir0 kick our ass in every POTM ;)