[Leica] RE: Results of April 2007 LUG photo contest

[jbm at jbm.org (Jeff Moore)]

2007-05-03-08:59:49 David Keenan:
> Frankly, regarding the winners,  other than the first place photograph, I
> have to wonder about the judging... I did see some red but it was in a some
> boring, badly composed photographs IMHO. (And stop it now -- this is not
> sour grades -- I did not have any horses in the race.)

H'mm...  speaking of horses, that's what makes horseraces, I guess.

Because... while I thought "Lest We Forget" was technically, formally
excellent, it just didn't grab me.  But that's easily explained by my
personal prejudices, which nearly always require people, or a certain
sort of anthropomorphic messiness, in photos.  This photo left me cold,
even as I admired it.

And there are a few photos in the contest (not the above, but some
things which seem like they might have even been setups for this
contest) which have that slick, polished, studio-photographer feel --
and my prejudice is just not to find them at all engaging.

"hot lips..." -- this is an amazing photo.  It's just interesting to
look at for purely visual reasons (I'm a sucker for the texture of the
corpulent, made-up face), but you also wonder about the backstory.  If
I'd been a judge (and didn't have the conflict of my own thing in the
running) I might well have ranked this one first.  I had my own horse in
this one, and unlike in previous contests (when I soon saw numerous
submissions which made me give up on my photo placing) I had a pretty
good feeling about the picture I'd entered; but "hot lips" is one of the
entries which worried me.

"desert flower" has a cool, space-alien look to it, with a balance of
negative space which has a certain rightness.  The only distraction is
that dark background thing piercing the foreground flower.

I liked that "red electric" wasn't literally red, even though the
literal word was there.

"RedDoor3" had a nice graphical immediacy, and good interplay between
the shadows' shapes and the door shapes.  I wonder if the little bit of
downward-camera-tilt keystoning detracts from the image's strength.

"red_f_two" works well, well-mixed symmetry and asymmetry, plus
compelling old-ladyness.

"Eyes" is a strong photo.  Sure, we all (the viewers, and presumably the
photographer) have seen Steve McCurry's iconic image to which this is a
bit similar -- but still, this is a nice photo.  The colors really work.

And yes, by this time, I'm fully feeling Brian's complaint that too many
of us (myself absolutely included) were literally using the color red.
I guess it takes seeing the images collected for that fatigue to set in.

"Colameter" is a snappy composition.

"Evil eye" is cool -- it's refreshing by this point not to have huge
washes of red, and there is something menacing about the glowing red
eye-lights in this context.

"RED": finally another interpretation of the theme-word, though with
some actual red in there as well.  Full marks for conceptual
something-or-other. 

"red hat": cute, but for me the gimmickiness drops it right out of the
running.

"Strawberry": I feel I've seen things like this before, but still,
there's something about the color rendition which teases my eye and
makes me keep looking.

I like the muted, textured hint of red in "Stude study".  There are
details of the overall composition which trouble me a bit (although I
have no reason to believe I'd have been able to pull it off any better),
but the truck and its color in that light are compelling.

There!  Having gored some oxen, I can probably expect stern treatment
when I next post something...  but anything's better than being ignored!

 -Jeff M