I'm tempted to restart the competitions, discuss
- Thread starter Phate
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Soldato
Pointless without themes to be honest. The competition didn't die because of themes, it died because the forum died.
Soldato
The whole point of the competition was to challenge the entrants, to get them to think about what they were going to do for the competition and how they could interpret the theme. Without that it's just "enter what I shot this month", just a glorified PYPH with voting.
Then expand the timeline to 2-4 months so people can work at it.
What you are suggesting is do the exact same thing as the last competition and pray to god that somehow for some unknown reason people keep participating, even although nothing has changed.
Besides which I completely disagree. Having no theme or broad categories allows people to work at getting their best photos in genres that they understand and connect, have the appropriate gear and understanding and above else have a deeper passion for producing fantastic results. Niche themes like circles force people to try to heavily incorporate that idea into their work within a very limited amount of time. That has nothing to do with photography as an artistic expression. It has about as much relevance as also asking people a load of math questions, to run mile in the fastest time or write poetry as part of the competition. Yes it is a skill you can evaluate people on and thus form a quasi competition but honestly who cares? When I visit an art gallery I don't judge pieces of art by their adherence to some arbitrary metric but by the quality, emotion, feelings, details, presence etc.
Completely disagree, the niche themes have the potential to be great levelers between pro and new photographers. Give too much time to plan shots and that can only benefit the experienced, likewise without themes those that shoot more will even have a larger body of work to choose from.
Soldato
You seem to think the forum died because the competition wasn't popular. The competition died as a direct result of the forum becoming very quiet and devoid of any real community. There wasn't anything wrong with competition format before, the participation when the forum was actually busy proved that.
The forum died for many reasons. That is a completely different discussion to why the competition was stopped and there is already a seperate thread discussing that.
The competition died because people couldn't and didn't keep entering every single month with a photo meeting some arbitrary theme that they had not chosen. The last discussion on the matter highlighted this quite clearly, with most people saying they keep missing the deadline or didn't enter because of the theme. And it is clear from this thread that again, many people do not want the themes, or need more time to work towards given theme. Yes, some people like the themes but nothing would stop them working towards their own theme.
It doesn't matter how busy the forum if the competition is doomed if more people don't want to or can't enter regularly.
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Personally I didn't enter them because I rarely have much down time after work, and from experience of entering a photo52, the themes forced on you end up making it feel like work, which takes away the point of photography for me. I'm sure others like having to think in a different way, but I like to take photos the way I see things, of the things I want to, so it's too restrictive for me 
Personally I didn't enter them because I rarely have much down time after work, and from experience of entering a photo52, the themes forced on you end up making it feel like work, which takes away the point of photography for me. I'm sure others like having to think in a different way, but I like to take photos the way I see things, of the things I want to, so it's too restrictive for me
That is exactly how I felt and I know there are many people like us that share the same feelings towards the completion.
Soldato
The competition died because the forum died, it is entirely linked. There were no issues with the competition when the forum was active and full of people contributing and discussing photography. This isn't a recent issue, the forum started to decline back when I won the competition in 2010. It slowly got more and more quiet over a couple of years to get where it did last year when the competition stopped. Fix the issues with the forum and the competition will fix itself, no matter what the format is.
We can agree to disagree then.
The format of the previous completion prevented me and plenty of others form entering, as discussed here and in the previous head from the summer. If the competition was more popular then the forum might be as well, if the forum is popular that doesn't mean people will enter a competition they strongly dislike the format of.
Soldato
Plenty of others where? When the forum was alive the vast majority of active posters would be involved in the competition at one stage or another. You only have to go and look at the competition website to see that.
Things have changed a lot though since those days. If the competition has to be dumbed down to get people to enter then it only devalues the forum further.
Things have changed a lot though since those days. If the competition has to be dumbed down to get people to enter then it only devalues the forum further.
ElDude and King4aDay for starters.
This isn't about dumbing down the competition but making it more appealing for a broader spectrum of photographers and generating more interest and more submissions. In fact dropping themes or extending the submission time will almost certainly improve the quality of submissions and thus make the competition even more interesting.
Soldato
D.P. have you got an example of what theme would work? Or do you want to judge a wedding photo and a nature shot in the same time frame? 
I wouldn't worry about what I think in regards to competitions. I really don't have time and would only enter one if I happened to have taken a photo that week that coincidentally fitted the theme. I think they're good for a community spirit, but finding a way of doing it would be the difficult part.
The scoring previously I thought was pretty bad as it was very heavily based on someone's interpretation (the judge(s)) of how they saw it and often I found myself wondering what they were thinking when making some of the choices.
If I had to chose a style of competition I'd say removing an overall winner for the year would make it better as the old version had a list of built up points and some did state at various points that they wouldn't catch up as they'd missed so many entries (at least I think that was here, I'm so tired
).
At the end of the day, try something, if it doesn't work, try something else. You won't know until you try something at least
The scoring previously I thought was pretty bad as it was very heavily based on someone's interpretation (the judge(s)) of how they saw it and often I found myself wondering what they were thinking when making some of the choices.
If I had to chose a style of competition I'd say removing an overall winner for the year would make it better as the old version had a list of built up points and some did state at various points that they wouldn't catch up as they'd missed so many entries (at least I think that was here, I'm so tired
).At the end of the day, try something, if it doesn't work, try something else. You won't know until you try something at least
D.P. have you got an example of what theme would work? Or do you want to judge a wedding photo and a nature shot in the same time frame?
I certainly have no issue awarding marks to a set of photos of different topics, viewing a wedding photo as a wedding photo and a landscape as a landscape photo etc. This only becomes difficult if you are supposed to pick a single best photo. That is certainly easier than trying to award marks based on how well a particular photo fits an arbitrary theme.
Furthermore, if desired we could set up a few broad categories and people can submit a single photo into different categories as they wish. The freedom will allow people to be creative and work at photos that they care about rather than feel like they have to conform to some random theme they don't care about.
Themes may work if the theme is broad enough and there is sufficient time to plan, practice and work towards that theme. But there are not many really broad themes that I can think of that would suit everyone all the time.
Man of Honour
I tried to get back into it. Back in the day when I wasn't shooting anything specific work wise or personal projects wise I had time to go out and shoot specifically for a competition but since then if I shot a project and a photo fell into a category for that month's competition I'd maybe submit it.
In part it was laziness setting in and secondly I was never a fan on long drawn out guidelines/rules as I prefer to just get on with the practical aspect and share the results. The fewer politics the better we focus on the actual art no?
In part it was laziness setting in and secondly I was never a fan on long drawn out guidelines/rules as I prefer to just get on with the practical aspect and share the results. The fewer politics the better we focus on the actual art no?