Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 2008/02/04
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]On Feb 3, 2008, at 10:36 AM, Brian Reid wrote: > The photo contest is anonymous. Unless the entrant's work is well > enough known that you can look at it and say "Oh, yes, that's by > Steve Barbour" then the judges look only at the image itself. > > The image that came in dead last in the January contest was this > one, entitled "Snow 5": > > http://contest.leica-users.org/main.php/v/0801/IMG_4117.jpg.html > > Once the results of the contest were published and I saw that this > image was by Mads Christensen, who lives in Iraq, my opinion of the > image totally changed. Suddenly the brown parts of the image weren't > just "brown crud" they were "sands of Iraq" we can have a profound emotional reaction to "Sands of Iraq" without a photo...so clearly the feelings we get on appreciating a photo, come, only in part, from the photograph itself... does that make it a better photo ? Steve > , and suddenly the little patches of snow took on a much more > complex meaning. > > Mads is, to my knowledge, the only LUGger who lives in Iraq or who > has been there recently, so if he had given this picture a caption > identifying it as "Snow in Iraq" we would all have known whose image > it was. > > I'm not a judge, but like all of the rest of you I have opinions > about photographs, and I find that now that I know what this picture > is, I'm fascinated by it, especially by the "Full size" version. But > the knowledge that it came from Iraq, and was therefore taken by > Mads Christensen, is a necessary part of that fascination. > > Curious. I don't think it would work to revise contest rules, but > this might be worth thinking about. > > > _______________________________________________ > Leica Users Group. > See http://leica-users.org/mailman/listinfo/lug for more information