I'm tempted to restart the competitions, discuss

Nice one Jake, I'm good with that and a nice simple theme to start should get a few entries.

I'll also talk to the powers that be today about getting a framed free print done for the winner as well. It may only be A4 sized or something but it's a little bit of something!
 
Well I'll probably only enter round one of its organised like that, but I dislike the idea of being judged technically by people with imperfect technical knowledge (I include myself in that group!). Losing points for not being bang on the rule of thirds for example (which is only a *******isation of the Golden ratio anyway) when a particular comp may be stronger ignoring it. Or people thinking that shooting wideangle landscapes at f5.6 is wrong because they don't know that depth of field is related to sensor size and I'm using m43.

I think this will die within a year because it's too much faff. The effort involved in giving detailed judging scores will mean that you end up with the same half dozen people entering by the end. The photo forum is really quiet these days anyway.

I still think low barrier to entry (ie no themes) and instant poll judging (or asking people to list top 3 in a thread or something) will encourage greater participation, bring in new people and maximise entries because more people will have shot something they feel worth entering as part of their normal shooting without having to find time for dedicated comp shooting.

Keep it quick, simple and popular.

Sorry to sound like a massive grump, I do appreciate Phate making the effort to get something rolling again!
 
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King4aDay said:
Well I'll probably only enter round one of its organised like that, but I dislike the idea of being judged technically by people with imperfect technical knowledge. Losing points for not being bang on the rule of thirds for example (which is only a *******isation of the Golden ratio anyway) when a particular comp may be stronger ignoring it. Or people thinking that shooting wideangle landscapes at f5.6 is wrong because they don't know that depth of field is related to sensor size and I'm using m43.

I think this will die within a year because it's too much faff. The effort involved in giving detailed judging scores will mean that you end up with the same half dozen people ending by the end. The photo forum is really quiet these days anyway.

I still think low barrier to entry (ie no themes) and instant poll judging will encourage greater participation, bring in new people and maximise entries because more people will have shot something they feel worth entering as part of their normal shooting without having to find time for dedicated comp shooting.

Keep it quick, simple and popular.
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It will only die if we let it die, remember that its only a starting position and we can tweak as needed.

I tend to agree on the poll vote side of things for speed but lets just get something in place and we'll see how it moves.
 
I like the sound of phates ideas.

Themes are good as it makes you go outside your comfort zone. If you can't come up with a shot 1 month just don't enter
 
Specific themes are the main thing drawing me to it as it gets me trying to shoot things I've never done before and hopefully learn some tricks along the way.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
I'm just starting in Photography and this seems a great idea. It will give me some ideas and inspiration.

If there's anything i can do to help, drop me a note :)

edit i was wondering if this could be released.
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18484679
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I imagnie you can unsticky that thread, yes. :)

AH - Going off my last question, is it possible to create a poll where only specific users can vote but everyone can view the results?
 
Brabbinho said:
I like the sound of phates ideas.

Themes are good as it makes you go outside your comfort zone. If you can't come up with a shot 1 month just don't enter
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Thing is if you look at th last discussion had on setting up anew competition there were a load of people saying they wanted to enter but ran out of time.


If you have a theme the the deadline is very real and very short if run once a month. People would come up with some ideas but all of a sudden the deadline will have passed.


I can guarantee if you keep the themes and keep the monthly aspect the competition will fail just like the last one for the exact same reasons.


If there was no theme then it wouldn't matter what month you submitted your photo., alternatively if you had 3-4 months to work towards your goals then you would hopefully have sufficient time. Strict deadlines and themes just make the competition impractical.
 
Columbo said:
The biggest problem with the old comp was the turnaround time of the judging. It didn't keep things moving fast enough and by the time the results were a lot of people forgot about it.



I'm not sure what the length of the day has to do with photography unless all you intend to do is take pictures of landscapes in the day. The point of the comp would be to apply different styles for different themes.

To get people outside of their norm and challenge their creative side, the previous comp did that for me on several occasions and it worked quite well.



I think you are missing the point entirely. It's supposed to be fun and a bit of a laugh, if you are stressing about deadlines for this type of comp where the results really don't mean anything other than some feedback for your shot then its probably not for you.
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Photography is about capturing light. If you don't understand how missing all hours of daylight stuck in an office affects photography then perhaps you shouldn't be entering competitions but learning the fundamentals! If you think leveraging natural light is limited to landscape photography you have a lot to learn.
 
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Admiral Huddy said:
Surely there's nothing to loose. The section is very active with keen photographers at all different abilities.
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We had the exact same discussion in the summer and there was supposed to be a summer comp but no one could even be bothered to start that. The format seems the same as the last competition which failed. none of the issues of the previous comp have been changed so I don't see why we expect a difference in outcome.:confused:


Anyway, good luck, I hope I am wrong because I know for some people it can be exciting and useful:)
 
D.P. said:
Photography is about capturing light. If you don't understand how missing all hours of daylight stuck in an office affects photography then perhaps you shouldn't be entering competitions but learning the fundamentals!
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I'm more interested in learning and developing my skills than actually winning.
Having a theme and a deadline will push me to actually doing something.

I understand where your coming from though.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Do they have to monthly? Can you not have annual or bi-annual themes running concurrently?
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I think monthly would be about right if it was themeless - frequent enough to keep people interested and feeling competetive without the pressure of finding spare time to shoot stuff specifically for the comp. I agree with DP that a change from previous formats is worth a go, interest in them always waned quickly even when the photography forum was more active.
 
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Phate said:
I don't like this, the competition would be forgotten about, in my opinion.
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Really, I think it either needs to be completely themeless and monthly might work, or if a theme is required limiting it to quarterly at the most.

Without a theme people can concentrate on taking great photos as they wish and can enter them whenever they have a good photo, rather than scrambling to a deadline, or more likely, missing the deadline for that theme and not entering which is why the last comp died. If themes ares desired then the frequency has to drop dramatically to allow people a chance to work towards that theme

I really don't think using the same format as last time will succeed. Nothing has changed on the forum to suggest the old format will work. People didn't stop entering because of judging, they stopped entering because they kept missing the deadline.
 
Admiral Huddy said:
Do you think the forum is less active than it once was?
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I do. Or has less regular contributors anyway. I could be wrong, it just feels that way to me.

It might have something to do with most of the images being posted in the "Post your pictures here" or the various themed "[PIC THREAD]" threads rather than people creating threads of their own, that definitely stifles comments and critique - now you might get a 'nice pic' or two if you're lucky.
 
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