Competitions: A Topic for Discussion

[aam1234]

I enter competitions very often (aside from here) almost on a weekly basis. And I noticed something common in almost all of them. I'm rarely convinced of say the top three entries. I find some of the other entries more deserving of winning. That's not always the case, but it happens so frequently. I know I know, it's a subjective and personal thing. But still. What confirmed this impression is that one of the contests I started to enter into are for semi-pro's, and there the winners are usually with the best photos.

I started a topic about that in one of the contests, and somebody suggested that there are three things that get votes: kids, flowers, and pets. I'm starting to believe that.

What do you think?

Btw, I'm excluding my photos when talking about the subject. I admit mine are really bad :o

[Big_B]

Aam, you raise an interesting issue. One thing that I've noticed in past competitions is that quite often the 'prettiest' photo wins. However, that photo sometimes has a somewhat tenuous connection to the actual title of the competition. Similarly I notice that the most creative photos rarely do that well either.

All this begs the qustion about what should be done? I'd be interested to hear anyones thoughts about this. Here are a couple of quick options to get the conversation started:

Provide voting guidelines.
Have a panel of judges
Accept that people are voting for their favorite photo and leave it as is.
This is a really important issue so I'd really like to hear everyones opinion on the matter.

BB

[bikerider]

It sounds like you want to introduce a more 'professional' view of the judging and that seems fine at first glance. Then there is the issue that most people here are keen amateurs and are not experienced at being objective, which is what pro' judges are able to do, to a greater extent. I guess the defining thing about photos here is popularity, not necessarily the 'best' image, whether technically or compositionally. If you had two categories such as peoples' choice and best in competiton that might work, but then who judges the best category, some of the pros' perhaps. I think that makes organisation more difficult. That's my HO!
Roger.

[jfrancho]

Just a couple of brainstorms: You'd have to devise a way to certify the judges with a set fair criterion. You would want to continue the blind voting to eliminate any favoratism.

[Big_B]

It sounds like you want to introduce a more 'professional' view of the judging and that seems fine at first glance. Then there is the issue that most people here are keen amateurs and are not experienced at being objective, which is what pro' judges are able to do, to a greater extent. I guess the defining thing about photos here is popularity, not necessarily the 'best' image, whether technically or compositionally. If you had two categories such as peoples' choice and best in competiton that might work, but then who judges the best category, some of the pros' perhaps. I think that makes organisation more difficult. That's my HO!
Roger.

Some good points roger. I feel that the popular vote is an important componant of the competition. It keeps people engaged and is a very simple and transparent way of deciding the outcome.

However, having an external judge in addition to this might be very interesting. We could get them to post their choices of photos along with a paragraph explaining their reasoning.

I was thinking of having a pool of say 4-8 judges and getting one person to judge each competition. That would mean that each judge would only be required to contribute once every couple of months.

[Big_B]

Just a couple of brainstorms: You'd have to devise a way to certify the judges with a set fair criterion.

The judges would be given the critereon, which would be published in the competition rules. The judges would also have to post their reasoning.

You would want to continue the blind voting to eliminate any favoratism.

Absoultely.

[Sekabin]

I agree that it would be interesting to have both the popular vote and the judges vote, with an explanation of why the voted that way. That way we can learn both what people like and what the 'professionals' (maybe more than one judge is a good idea) think. I agree about the prettiest photo often winning from what I've seen - though I've only just entered my first competition on this forum.

[bikerider]

I agree a two tiered system is a good one and I like the idea of a pool of judges alongside the popular vote. I think a panel of three judges at a time would be best and have two sets that could change order over time. That set-up would give people two chances of winning. Any suggestions for the judge selection process?
Roger.

[jfrancho]

The judges would be given the critereon, which would be published in the competition rules. The judges would also have to post their reasoning. Absoultely.With those assurances, I think these ideas add tremendous value to the competitions. I'll stay tuned. Thanks.

[G3owner]

IMHO: Taking part in competitions here (and on many other similar sites too) is mainly for fun, partly for getting feedback to your photos. As bikerider said, most of us are just keen amateurs. The suggested two-tier system would certainly be interesting, and 'pro' judges and their explanations would certainly be very useful. But administering such a scheme won't be easy. You need to find the judges, they have to do their choice and explanations each time. Some of us amateurs might find this scheme a little bit too demanding and that might result in less entries.

So my suggestion is: continue with these two-week small theme competitions as is ('just for fun'), but make some guidelines for all of us to make the photos fit better into the subject, and some guidelines of what we should consider when voting.

Then, arrange quarterly, separate competitions with professional judges (maybe the 'POTN photographer of the year' could be used for this purpose - four themes a year, announced at the beginning of each year and a few professional judges. Maybe even some small price for the over-all winner...)


G3owner

[jfrancho]

I don't think monetary rewards fits with the overall philosophy of the site. Any financial gains should be used to defer costs of running the site.

[Big_B]

I don't think monetary rewards fits with the overall philosophy of the site. Any financial gains should be used to defer costs of running the site.

I agree with you there.

Since aam started this conversation, I'd quite like him to come back on this before we take the ideas any further. Hopefully he'll get chance to drop by in the next day or two. Otherwise we'll progress as we have been discussing.

[aam1234]

Well the intention of posting this thread was to understand why and how people vote, I wasn't complaining or anything. Honestly I'm fine with how things are right now, people are people and they have their preferences/tastes or even biases, which I respect.

I think the idea of judges is a great one. However and as someone mentioned, it requires a lot of effort to setup and administer. So maybe it's suited for the bigger contests.

[Nikolas]

Personally, If I see another flower pic it will not be long enough.
So sick of flowers!!!!!!!!!!

[aam1234]

I don't even open flowers, kids, and pets photos in contests, let alone vote for them :lol: (of course there are exceptions).

[Big_B]

Ok, the next thing to do is to find some judges. If anyone reading this is interested in being a judge, please send me a PM.

I'll decide how best to organise the judging based on how many judges I get and how much time they would like/are prepared to give. My expectation is that we will probably have one judge per contest as asking two or three people to coordinate opinions and form a joint judgement would be rather time consuming. There would a be a pool of judges, so if we had 4 judges, each judge would be required to contribute roughly once every two months (assuming that each contest lasts two weeks).

However, as I say, this will be decided finally once the judges are in place.

Another issue that will need to be decided is the criteria that we give the judges to use. It could be as general as an equal weighting to subject matter, technical skill and human interest. Alternatively, it could be a quite detailed list. Finally, we might want to set the criteria so that the judges tended to pic photos that would not have made it in a popular vote, perhaps just focussing on technical skill.

All these are possiblities and I would like to hear your views. In this discussion, it may help to have a particular contest in mind, so lets use a fictional one: Rain.

If you were designing the judging criteria for the contest 'rain' what would you use?

[aam1234]

Sam, my friend Sam,

You are taking it way too seriously.

I admire the effort you put (past tense) and the current effort as well. But at the end, this is a fun learning exercise.

Having said that, I'm willing to contribute to make the contests more meaningful and more fun.

The one thing this contest is lacking is being interactive. At the current setup, it's pretty static. And dare I say, it's pretty lifeless too. Sorry.

[aam1234]

I think to make the contest more engaging, it should require at least the name of the photographer. A brief description on how he/she got the photo doesn't hurt either.

In other words, let's make it open, why the secrecy?

[jfrancho]

I wonder if we use the theme of the contest to be like an assignment, or learning excercise, instead of some interpretation of the theme title.

[aam1234]

I'm not sure what's the difference John. Care to elaborate.

[Big_B]

Sam, my friend Sam,

You are taking it way too seriously.
.

Sorry, it's a bad habit of mine! :lol:


Having said that, I'm willing to contribute to make the contests more meaningful and more fun.

The one thing this contest is lacking is being interactive. At the current setup, it's pretty static. And dare I say, it's pretty lifeless too. Sorry.

I couldn't agree with you more. At times it feels like I'm having a monologue, which is ok, but it would be so much more fun if more people were getting involved and interacting.

This is a short post as I'm off to bed in a minute. I've a busy day tomorrow. Perhaps we can all talk about this more over the weekend.

[aam1234]

If Sam or anybody else is interested in seeing how other contests are run, let me know. People are encouraged to comment. Not only that but people get mad if somebody just post a photo then disappears.

[Big_B]

Go for it. Do you have some links we could look at?

[jfrancho]

I'm not sure what's the difference John. Care to elaborate.Well, the previous contests have themes like macro, abstract, advertising, etc. I was thinking along the lines of a contest that focuses on a specific technique, such as DOF, composition, panning, etc. We could have a contest where the goal was something like false subject composition. Maybe the entrant would be allowed to submit a short statement that documents how they acheived the effect, or what settings they used. I'm still just brainstorming here. I got the idea when the subject of highly qualified judges was brought up. It would be great to leverage that wealth of knowledge and expertiese that such persons could offer. Might be too difficult to do.

[aam1234]

Here (http://www.pbase.com/cslr_challenge/cslr40_eligible) is one. I choose it because there are some breathtaking photos there. And I joined them just recently. Oh, I also choose it because I don't have entries there, don't want to embarrass myself :lol:

And here (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=14419164) is a typical discussion that goes along with these contests. Notice that the thread reached its limit of 150 posts so they started a new thread, which has another 50 or so posts, untill the contest was over.

Edit: Don't forget to check out the comments under the photos.

[aam1234]

John, that's an excellent idea.

[Big_B]

Well, the previous contests have themes like macro, abstract, advertising, etc. I was thinking along the lines of a contest that focuses on a specific technique, such as DOF, composition, panning, etc. We could have a contest where the goal was something like false subject composition. Maybe the entrant would be allowed to submit a short statement that documents how they acheived the effect, or what settings they used. I'm still just brainstorming here. I got the idea when the subject of highly qualified judges was brought up. It would be great to leverage that wealth of knowledge and expertiese that such persons could offer. Might be too difficult to do.

Techncial stuff sounds an excellent idea.

Sorry, but what do you mean by 'false subject composition'?

[Big_B]

Here (http://www.pbase.com/cslr_challenge/cslr40_eligible) is one. I choose it because there are some breathtaking photos there. And I joined them just recently. Oh, I also choose it because I don't have entries there, don't want to embarrass myself :lol:

And here (http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1019&message=14419164) is a typical discussion that goes along with these contests. Notice that the thread reached its limit of 150 posts so they started a new thread, which has another 50 or so posts, untill the contest was over.

Edit: Don't forget to check out the comments under the photos.

Aam,

Thanks for sharing these, it looks like a really fun contest. The question I have is how to get from here to there. Looking at the rules it seems that the DP contest is set up more or less as ours is. Therefore does it just take a few of us to get active with making comments to get the ball rolling, or do we need to do something more?

[aam1234]

Nothing special to do. Just let people know that it's OK to talk ;)

Nobody will bite them :D

[Big_B]

I agree, the best way to do that is if we all lead by example and comment away :)

However, I wonder if the judges idea mightnt also help with this. Let's say we got 4 or 5 volunteers (perhaps regular contributers to this competition area) to take it in turns to be the 'judge' for a competition. At the end of the compeittion they could set out why they did like this photo/didn't think that one worked or whatever. If it was done correctly, it could be seen as the openening of a conversation hopefully others would reply saying why they agreed/disagreed. What do you think?

[aam1234]

Honestly, I'm not sure about the "judges" idea. We are suppose to have fun and learn something in the process. We are not here to be "judged".

[aam1234]

Thinking about it. We might as well make sure the photos conform to the subject. Notice many (maybe a lot) don't adhere to the contest rule.

[BeccaNH]

IMHO, if the decision is made to get judges for these competitions, they need to be given some criteria for judging. Say... composition, DOF, lighting, adherance to theme. If judges are used, they need to judge on the technical quality of the photograph, otherwise its just subjective. Although, isn't all art subjective? I would also like to see comments from the judges about why each photograph was given the rating it was. Afterall, a lot of us use this forum to learn how to be better photographers (at least I do!) so rather than just a flat ranking, give some feedback about why and how the decisions were made.

Just throwing in my 2 cents worth...

[jfrancho]

Techncial stuff sounds an excellent idea.

Sorry, but what do you mean by 'false subject composition'?It's where you add some intereest element to a much bigger element. For example, a big mountain landscape with hiker in the shot. The picture isn't really about the hiker, it's the landscape. But you quickly see the hiker, and it draws you in, hopefully noticing other details you would miss just admiring the landscape. Here is an example: http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=91503
It doesn't have to be a big landscape, though. Could be a fountain with a couple sitting on the edge. Basically you frame the landscape, and leave the "phony" subject wherever it ends up.

[SuperFly]

Just to add to this one...

I think the last day of one competition should immediately be the start day of the next comp. as i have seen being done on other comp sites, this provides a more rolling comp. system and also doesn't waste any time as a person usually votes - lets say within a maximum time of 30 minutes, which leaves the next 7 days basically dead time until the next comp is announced?

What do you think?

[Big_B]

I agree. I've been bringing the start date forward so that it commences before voting closes, but haven't done it in a systematic manner yet. The start date is generally determined by the amount of work I have on, thus the amount of time I have to sort out the details.

I'm going to try something a little different this time, hence the longer then usual delay. I'll try and get something up by tomorrow.