Photo contests

It is that time of the year. The beginning of Photo Contest season. It seems to me that it starts in summer and goes through the end of the year. Many contests in the same area will stagger them so people can enter several of them using the same photos.

I do like to enter some contests for various reasons but the main ones being is seeing what other photographers are doing, seeing how well I am doing technically to other photographers and getting feedback from others. There is no guarantee to any photography contest because, as with all arts, the judging always is subjective. It can be technically perfect and lose out to one that is not as perfect but it really appeals to the judges. Often times the only feedback you get is looking at the other photographs but by seeing what was judged the best at the show can help you improve your photography or see what trends are popular, one show does not show a trend but several do.

Recently I have entered photographs into two contests, The Iowa State Fair Photography Salon and the Linn County Fair. I will not know if any of my photos were accepted for the State Photography Salon much less placed until late July, there was a limit of 4 photos. I am realistic enough not to expect any of my photos to be accepted into the salon.

The County Fair was this weekend and I did well. All ten of my photos were hung and 3 placed in their categories. I did noticed that in many of the categories that the very colorful, almost over saturated, photos did better that the ones that were less colorful. While one of my Black and Whites did well, for the most part B&Ws did not do well. I also noticed that while the county allowed any size photo up to 11X14 almost everything that placed was 11x14 or matted up to that size. I have noticed that in most contests the larger photos do better and many are now requiring the outer dimensions to be 11X14.

I placed first in Creative Enhanced. The photograph is an HDR of Mission Espada, this is in San Antonio, TX, that was printed on metallic paper. The metallic paper really made the photo pop. This one was the only one of my photos that had judges comments- "Excellent use of HDR, Choice of metallic paper really gives this piece and embossed feeling!"

I placed second in Nature. The photograph is of a Door County, WI Fish Boil. This photo has very little editing. Mainly just a little bit of cropping. This was also printed on metallic paper which made the flames look almost 3D. The reason I choose Nature as the category was that this was it fit best.

I also had another second place photo. This one was in the Still Life. It is a Black and White of Wild Rye. This was taken at Wickiup Hill. I choose this one as a Black and White because I liked how the Black and White brought out the  graceful lines of the plant where as the color was boring.

As you can see these are each a very different style from each other but each of them appealed to the judges in one way of another.

HDR

HDR, High Dynamic Range, is becoming a very popular technic of processing photographs. It is a process of allowing a greater dynamic range from the very light highlights to the very dark shadows. This is usually done by taking several shots at different f stops, this is called bracketing, then stacking them and adjusting the composite image with special software. The image resulting can look more like the eye sees to be something totally abstract or anything in between depending on the images and the photographer.

I have played with this technic a little bit with varying success. I think that my most successful HDR is of the inside of San Fernando Cathedral in San Antonio. The photograph was taken about 2pm on a very sunny day so the light coming through the stained glass windows washed out most of the colors. I still need to reedit this photo and add the window with all its colors back into it.

It is comprised of 3 sections, right middle and left each with 3 brackets so a total of 9 photos were used. The method I used in processing this photograph was to process each section as an HDR then merge them together. This allowed me to work on keeping the halos down around the windows. I think I did a pretty good job on managing the halos and keeping it natural looking.

When I tried merging the sections together and then merge the brackets together as an HDR I was not happy with the results. It did not look right to me.

That is the nice thing about computers. You can try working with the photos in different ways and if you are not happy you do not have to save it while keeping your original files safe.

Does HDR work for all images. No, it is just another tool in the photographers toolbox to use when needed. I have seen HDR photographs by other photographers and while some have been amazing others have been awful. It really depends on the image and the photographer if this technic adds or subtracts from the photograph.

I hope that by next week I will have edited the photos I took on a recent trip so I can share them.