POTN Powershot Speed Challenge #109 - Stairs

Challenge #109 - STAIRS

RESULTS!

The role of judging was not a happy one this week. I thought the subject would be an easy one, but we only had a few entries and despite my best efforts warn everyone to read the rules, only three photos actually qualified.

FIRST - Edd S: "Step Into the Light". Well composed and a masterful job (helped by the title, I have to admit) of turning a maybe unrecoverable photo into one that could illustrate an end of life experience. So congratulations, over to you for the next challenge, and I hope your subject gets more entries than this one.

SECOND - Micky Daeus: "Tropical Staircase". A staircase with endless photographic possibilities, and I can understand what you mean about wishing to go back to capture an even better composition.

THIRD - jde95tln: "Into The Darkness". You get third place by default. You mention that for some reason your photo of these stairs was dictated by file size, but this has resulted in a rather awkward shape and composition, not to mention being overly dark for my taste (sorry, just one guy's opinion).

The rest...oh dear!

DeeDoubleYou - a nice shot that could have placed, but despite my sending a couple of PMs the image still did not meet the 800 pixel size requirement.
Danpass - entry was way too small.
pcrstn8 - photo is not visible
Benarnold - entry just missed the 12:00 noon GMT deadline

A note on file size and image size: quite a few people entering these challenges have difficulty understanding how to resize an image to exact dimensions and how to adjust the JPG compression to reduce file size if needed. Judges usually don't have time to do much more than point out to people that their entries don't meet the rules, and to expect judges to give tutorials and tips to individuals during a contest seems unfair to all. It would therefore be handy if someone wrote a tutorial on manipulating file and image sizes and maybe posted it as a "sticky" so that judges could refer people there on occasion.

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The subject is STAIRS. This means almost any flight of man-made stairs, indoors or out, but not portable stairs or ladders or toys. The winner will (I hope) be a well composed, striking photo that would be worthy of framing. The main focus of the photo should be the stairs, not some cute kid or Playboy model climbing them. There are stairs all around wherever you live, so go to it and let's see lots of entries.

Please give your entry a TITLE in the subject line and READ THE RULES! It would be a pity for a good photo to be disqualified for not being the 800 pixel size or for being over the 200k file size limit.
_______________

To submit, click "Post Reply" and put your Photo Name in the Subject Line. Don't forget your Camera Model.

Post until Monday noon GMT, 11 February 2008

Photo Submissions
1. Camera -- Any Canon Powershot Series Camera (SD, A-series, S1/2, & S-series only...No Pro 1's!!!)

2. Time -- any on-topic photo taken at any time is eligible, although photos that have won other competitions should NOT be entered.

3. Size -- Photo must be EXACTLY 800 pixels on the longest side and no more than 200K in size with NO BORDERS. Here is some help for resizing your photos in Photoshop - https://photography-on-the.net/forum/...9&pos​tcount=26

4. Post-Processing -- do whatever you like and the host will decide if it works.

5. Posting --
* ONE PHOTO per photographer in each challenge.
* Photo Name in the message subject line.
* Camera model.

6. Notes -- Name and camera you used and any other information pertaining to the photo...location, photo tips, brief EXIF data ect.

7. Commenting -- No commenting during challenge. When the posting is closed, comments can be made in this thread.

Time

One challenge every week, on the following schedule:

• New Topic ... After winner is declared.
  
• Posting Starts ... Right after topic is announced.
  
• Posting Stops ... Monday noon GMT
  
• Winners Announcement ... As soon as possible after the contest has been closed.

Tropical Staircase

S3 IS
Auto everything
1/60
F2.7

Holiday snapshot, wish I could go back and take more to get a better take on it!

HOSTED PHOTO
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"Into the Darkness"

I went out and took a few pic's at work there are some neat looking stairs there, I had a hard time choosing which shot to post. In the end file size determined which one I would post. This is my first contest entry so hope I followed the rules correctly.

Taken with an A630,
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv (Shutter Speed) 1/60
Av (Aperture Value) 3.2
ISO Speed 400
Flash ON

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/gif' | Redirected to error image by FLICKR

Mossy Steps

Canon SD 800IS
manual mode
f3.2
1/50 sec

These are steps along a trail that surrounds one of the many temples in Kyoto, Japan. Except for reducing the size, I did not color edit, sharpen, or crop this photo at all.

HOSTED PHOTO
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Step Into the Light

Title: Step Into the Light
Camera: Canon S3IS

Background: When I took this picture, the sky was totally blown out, so I processed it to clean it up a little and make it look like the person was stepping up toward the light.

Criss Cross

Challenge closed at 12:00 GMT. Thanks everyone - results soon!

Results now posted at the top!

Thanks for the first place vote. New Challenge up shortly.

"Photo is not visible."



Fixed it but it's the wrong size and doesn't have a title and it's too late anyway (smack forehead with palm of hand).

teekay wrote in post #4851521
Challenge #109 - STAIRS

A note on file size and image size: quite a few people entering these challenges have difficulty understanding how to resize an image to exact dimensions and how to adjust the JPG compression to reduce file size if needed. Judges usually don't have time to do much more than point out to people that their entries don't meet the rules, and to expect judges to give tutorials and tips to individuals during a contest seems unfair to all. It would therefore be handy if someone wrote a tutorial on manipulating file and image sizes and maybe posted it as a "sticky" so that judges could refer people there on occasion.

I wrote just that tutorial a couple years ago - it is in the Sharing Knowhow section of this site. The search function is your friend! Here is the link:

https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=255957

This tutorial uses The GIMP which is open source and available at no cost for Windows and Linux. It will do everything needed to scale and size images for the speed competitions.

Regards,
GEWB

gewb wrote in post #4897147
I wrote just that tutorial a couple years ago - it is in the Sharing Knowhow section of this site....

Thanks, gewb, but I had in mind something for general use, rather than a specific GIMP tutorial, although that would certainly do the trick. I did do a quick search during the challenge but didn't find any general "how to" that could be used in nearly all editing software. It's such a simple matter that most people don't need to download additional software, they just have to learn to use what they have already.

teekay wrote in post #4851521

Danpass - entry was way too small.

but otherwise .............. ? ? ?


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