Announcing the winners of the 2006 Photo Contest!!

This was by far the best photo contest we've ever done; the quality of the pictures were outstanding and I'm glad that no single person had to have the difficult job of finding the winner.

Out of 1,056 pictures entered, Floridian won the "Best of Show" award with her "Bug Buddies" photo. linthicum won both second and third place in Best of Show, with her Canada Geese and Springtime reflection.

Best of Show winners here:

http://davesgarden.com/contest/2006/winners.php?catid=272

You may view the winners of each category by going to the main contest page and select the category to view.

http://davesgarden.com/contest/2006/

A hearty thank you and congratulations to everyone who participated!

Dave

Bravo! Congratulations to all!

I won??!!

I'm (almost) speechless...

I'm so excited!! The competition was incredible, so many, many beautiful photos were entered

Thanks so much to everyone that voted for my photo

Stacey

Congratulations to everyone!

Dea

I voted for the right ones, I guess. Anyway I am happy about the winners.
Congratulations, you two.

Ann

Congratulations, everyone! It was such fun viewing all these beautiful photos. Because there were so many good ones, it was sometimes hard to choose.

Am I confused or just still sleepy? In the "Scenic, Seasonal and Sunset" category, why wasn't the first place winner a finalist for the Best of Show? And wasn't there a tie for second place in that category?

Congratulations Everyone!!!! especially Htop and Floridian, everyone did such a fine job, it was hard to decide, in my opinion they are all winners.
Josephine.

Congrats everyone. Wonderful pictures and yes, very hard to choose.

Congratulations to the winners, and to everyone (y'all are ALL winners, in my book!)

It was very hard to vote with so many wonderful choices!!!!!

Floridian, congratulations on your photo winning a well deserved "Best of Show". It was very artistically presented. Hopefully, it will find a place on your wall at home.

And, to all of the other first, second and third place winners ..... and runner-ups. Great Job !!!

This message was edited Dec 18, 2006 6:04 PM

Congrats to the winners and to everyone who entered! It was soooo hard to pic favorites.

I agree with Dave. The best contest yet! Well done, everyone.

Congrats to all the winners and runner ups. All your photos are lovely. Good show!

Congrats to eveyone, they were all winners in my eyes.

The photo contest was very representative of the great photos we see everyday here. I am thrilled to be among the winners considering the competition!! I was especially happy that my fav photo was best in show. Congrats, Stacey! Also I'd like to see more pics by bonitin. Where do you hang out??

Dave, this came up last year and I'd love to know. How do you pick the rank if the votes are the same number? Just curious, I'm quite content here, but I remember someone who was disgruntled last year and we never found out how you decided. Is it arbitrary or is there method to your madness?

Again, very satisfying contest. Every pic was wonderful to see!!

When there is a tie (were there any ties this year?) the computer chooses one over the other at random, but truly they are tied and you can see that because the number of votes are shown.

dave

Aha!
Yep there was a tie. Garden landscapes all had the same count. I was even tied with myself!!

Whoo Hooo, I placed in 3 catagories! Thanks everyone.

I liked it better this year although the limit to only two was tough. I do think though by doing that, it really brought out the best entries this time, it made us focus on what we felt was the best too. And by looking at all the other wonderful entries, it made me more aware of different angles and lighting options to try for as a goal for improving and it definitely makes me more critical of my own. LOL!

Congratulations to all the winners...I'm glad the computer has the final job of judging....it would be hard for one or two people to make the decisions.

There are some real beauties this year too. Jo

I see the tie now, and I hadn't noticed it before (the whole process is automated). The good news is that those three were the only ones to get 34 votes (all others in that category had less).

dave

Good job, Dave.
It might have been the best competition yet. Super pics.
Congrats to all the winners.
Andy P

I really like the limits on # of pictures this year--it saved me time on uploading my pics (as well as forcing me to choose the ones that really were the best!) and I loved it during voting because I was able to really look at all the pics and decide which I liked best--last year when there were tons and tons in each category I got tired looking at all the pictures and probably missed some good ones in some of the categories because I just didn't have time to go through everything.

Congratulations too all of you.. wonderful pictures.

Woo Hoo! That was the most exciting competition I've ever entered. I loved it! Congratulations to all who won. It was SOOOOOO hard to choose. There was tons of photos that I just loved.

Thank you Dave!!
Harper

Wonderful Contest this year!
Congratulations everyone......Thanks for sharing your passion and talents!

Wonderful photos everyone!
Special kudos to my friend and winner, Floridian!

During the recent photo contest, there was a fair amount of dialogue regarding the use of photo editing software to further enhance the photo. While the contest was underway, a few photos were negatively critiqued and one of those was accused (assumingly) of poorly cloned enhancements. Due to the confidential nature of the photo/photographer the respective photographer was at a disadvantage to respond to the assertions. In future contests, I strongly recommend that comments of this nature be prohibited. If a member finds it paramount to challenge a photo's integrity it can be done so behind the scene during the contest or in an open forum after the contest ends.

I agree. I think it detracted from the contest to think about "cheating." We should make a decision about enhanced photos and how to define enhancements before the next photo contest so this becomes a non-issue.

It should be easy - all enhanced photos othere then croping IMHO need not to be part. Any photos found to be such need to be keep there just unable to win. They are nice to look at but photo shop is not what I want to see when I look at photos.

I agree. Cropping and adding text and such like it acceptable, but using software to enhance blurring, colors, and sharpness and such-like shouldn't belong in a photo contest. I think next year we're going to make this a rule. It's only fair - it's a photography contest, not a photoshopping skills contest.

dave

Been taking too many photos this year so I hardly even crop anymore!! But still, here are some of my thoughts. I realize I'm playing devil's advocate and we are not all professional photographers. But for those of us who have done old time photography, enhancement was almost always half of photography, if you developed your own pics. You made decisions while shooting and then you made decisions in the darkroom. I'm sure most, if not all the photos that we strive to take are enhanced in some way and I don't mean cropping. For instance, I used to make decisions in the darkroom like leaving a print in the developer until I had what I wanted. I am not always happy using my camera on auto but I rarely use manual since I went digital. So to me that kind of decision is part of photography. I have friends who are professional photographers who are computer enhancing all of their photos to varying degrees. That is what we are emulating. I guess I don't think photography is just point and shoot. If people enhance (change the contrast, crop, brighten, change colors to look like the real color) it's not really cheating to me-it's photography. If someone enhances badly it's obvious and people don't vote for them. But we need to make our own guidelines before the next contest. It's just not cut and dry. Besides, I like to hear lots of viewpoints before we decide.

I loved looking at all the entries. Congratulations to all the winners!

boojum, you are right on. And, how is one, other than the photographer, going to unequivocally validate that photo editing was or wasn't used ? Remember the adage that only your hairdresser knows the color of your hair. Well, only the photographer really knows whether or not their photo was enhanced. This particular issue will require additional discussion.

The main thrust of my addressing the photo editing issue was not the function, itself, but the permitted comments of viewers inferring emphatically that a particular photo (assumed to be mine) had been edited (cloning) when, in fact, it had not, while the contest was still underway. Those comments inaccurately shed negative light on that particular photo. If those kind of negative comments are allowed to be made by a member viewer then the photographer of the photo should be allowed to respond to the issue. I actually almost withdrew the photo because of the inappropriateness of the comment timing. But then I remembered, it is supposed to be fun !!! So, in this instance, a viewer was 110% certain that the photo had been edited when it had not been, beyond some very minor cropping. No harm intentionally done, just an honest inaccurate analyses.

Life is stranger than fiction!! I know this because if you have ever drawn a figure, there are times when you can render the figure exactly as you are seeing it but on the paper, it looks wrong.
There is no debate about the fact that there should not be unfounded comments in public which can only go unrefuted during the contest. That shouldn't happen again!! Very unfair.
But what do people consider enhancement? If we had decided that cloning is okay there wouldn't have been a comment. Or someone could have reminded that person that cloning is allowed (even if there was none on your part) and that would have been the end of it. Come to think of it, I have at times used the cloning tool to get rid of some distracting object in the frame that I can't crop. By using the tool I've been able to extend a background wall color to eliminate the object. So is that not allowed? Luckily I didn't do any editing or I would have to confess my transgressions. But I am curious what others think?

Accountibility is impossible, but if there are guidelines then we can just have FUN! And if someone wins and doesn't go by the guidelines, they will have to live with themselves. The rest of us had a great contest.

Linthicum, I really would love to know why your deers on the right have 14 legs between 3 deers. Not another deer hidden that I can see, the smaller deer on the left of the group of 3 has a 2nd back of head with an extra pair of ears, I don't see how this can be.

I'm not accusing anyone of anything, but as we are discussing this openly and honestly I would love you to answer this honestly, as you have just stated here that you did not edit it.

I do however agree that discussion before the contest has finished voting on is not a good idea, in particular any picture being pointed out to others, this may have the effect of everyone making a beeline to that photo and to the neglect of others.

I must say there were some very good photos, and we all have different ideas about what makes a good photo, apart from personal taste.

It should be fun, so I agree that there should be clear cut guidelines next year before the competition begins. That way there can and should be no bickering about what should and should not be. The fun can be taken out of it to the point where many of us will not wish to participate again.

I do think that apart from cropping, a little basic adjustment on a photo does no harm. I'm not talking about advanced editing (which I don't have), just a little adjustment on the brightness and contrast which sometimes is impossible to achieve because of light conditions when the photo is taken. A good picture can then be as good as it would have been if the sun had been shining more or less or whatever, the weather can spoil a good subject and this can be put right after the photo has been taken. It is essentially the way a subject has presented itself, and been captured by the photographer which makes a good picture subject wise.

I think out of all my entries I used only the slightest brightness and contrast adjustment (something like -5 brightness, +5 contrast on AOL's picture) on 2 of them, but which didn't really need doing. I pondered about whether I should even do that, but to my eye I was more pleased when I did, and figured others will be doing the same.

Why not have a category next year just for photo shopped pics?

And I wasn't going to make any comments, oh well...........................

I didn't submit any photos and I don't edit what I share in regular threads other than to crop so I'm not going to comment about rules or guidelines for photo submissions but I hope we do this again next year and the year after that and the year after that because these photos were spectacular. I clicked on them all and loved every last one. I had difficulty voting because they were all so nice. The dragonfly on a flower bud and the geese in the fog stand out in my mind as photos that I would hang on a wall in my home but there were so many really good photos that each one was special in its own right. Matter of fact, I was thinking of looking up who the person was who took the geese to ask them if I could use it as desktop wallpaper because it's a great horizontal shot that is tranquil and soothing. All of the photo submissions were just so darn good I'm hoping we keep doing this as an annual event.

I usually don't enter into controversies on the site, preferring to be neutral, but I've studied photoshopped photos and know how to recognize them.

The deer photo is quite clearly photoshopped in a significant and obvious way.

http://davesgarden.com/contest/2006/image.php?rid=7012

The white appearing around the ears show that these animals were photographed behind a different background and then copied and pasted into the new background.

Also, the feet don't sit right on the ground - this is another give-away in photoshopped work. It's very difficult to copy animals into a picture and make them look natural in their stance on the ground. And there is the problem of the 3 deer having at least 13 feet (I counted 15, actually). Very clearly there should have been 12 feet or less visible.

The foreground and background are both blurred, while the deer are in pretty sharp focus. Also, there is a stray blur streak starting at the breast of the right-most deer and extending down to the southwest until it ends at the front feet of the third deer from the right. That streak was made by the smudge tool.

And another one: the lone deer on the left is the exact same deer that is in the middle of the trio on the right. It's been smudged a little but it's the same deer in the same pose.

Sorry for entering this controvery, but I can't just sit here and not say something. I think an apology is owed.

dave

Since Boojum asked for opinions, I'll offer my own. It seems to me that enhanced photos have an obvious advantage over unenhanced photos. What makes that advantage unfair, is that not everyone has access to a photo-enhancing program. So I 'might' be inclined to vote "no" on the photoshop photos......

However, the type of camera one uses can also have a distinct advantage. Not everyone has the good fortune to own a newer, better camera....which would naturally take better pictures than some older models with fewer built-in features.

So maybe it is always going to be unfair to someone. Maybe there is no equal ground when it comes to photo contests.

But maybe it shouldn't matter whether someone wins or loses. Maybe it should just be that the nicest picture wins, regardless of who submits it and what kind of camera they used, etc. After all, are we voting on the most appealing subject? Or the eye of the photographer? Or on one's "luck" at being in the right place at the right time? Or on whether one lives close to the ocean, or the mountains? My tiny garden can't compete with some of the lush, meandering vistas I've seen here. It can never be 100% fair. So I say let's forget all this discussion and just have no rules. Just pick the picture you like the best and vote for it.

And I definitely agree that all discussion of individual entries should be banned until the voting is over.

By the way, I did not submit any photos to the contest.

And I'm sorry to have been writing while Dave was posting.

This message was edited Dec 23, 2006 2:39 PM

I see that the baby deer also has 4 ears.

Dave, I took 19 photos of these deer in 65 seconds which will show the movement of the five deer, including the two fawns. I still have the originals right out of the camera with all of the EXIF data that I can send to you via snail mail if you wish. One can validate the exact time and movement, by the seconds. Or will one think I somehow falsified the EXIF data on the photos. I'm not sure one can even do that. Furthermore, why would I want to photoshop (other than cropping) this photo when I have others that are perhaps better than this one. I selected this photo for the contest primarily because of the "luck" in getting the head shot pose that I did. This same photo was previously posted on a thread along with a second photo showing the five deer separated from each other. No one questioned it at that time.

http://davesgarden.com/forums/t/644679/

If one takes a photo at 100' with a 500mm lens, the Depth of Field is fairly limited so some blurring should occur in the foreground and background if the subject(s) are in focus. And, they may also look like they are on top of each other when several feet may be separating them. I wasn't using a tripod, either.

Photo enhancements were not disallowed in the contest so why would I want to deny it. I really had nothing to gain by denying it. I wouldn't even have brought up the issue except for the accusations. I don't even know what a smudge tool is. Not that it matters at this juncture but I don't own Photoshop.

Here is a sequence of the first five photos. The first photo was taken at 8:52:05 a.m.