Is this exotic?

So I didn’t win, but not sur­pris­ing in hind­sight. At the Awards Night, held at Spectra’s Grafton Street shop, last Fri­day night, Dave McK­ane of Dig­i­tal Begin­ners (now Insti­tute of Pho­tog­ra­phy) revealed the win­ners and the deci­sion process behind their choice. I see that the win­ners haven’t been posted on his web­site yet, but read on for some reflec­tions on losing…

I haven’t entered many pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tions, but it is prob­a­bly fair to say that it is one of the best ways to grow as a pho­tog­ra­pher and to improve your skills. The orig­i­nal cri­te­ria for the Spec­tra Photo / Dig­i­tal Begin­ners com­pe­ti­tion was as follows:

…we’re look­ing for pho­tos that show the exotic nature of travel.

A travel pho­tog­ra­phy com­pe­ti­tion… right down my street. So with hopes high, I sub­mit­ted my entries, as out­lined below:

With nearly a thou­sand entries, I cer­tainly didn’t envy Dave’s job, but felt in with a chance when look­ing at the tech­ni­cal mer­its of some of the entries. I was apply­ing some of the usual measures:

• Is the image per­fectly sharp?
• Is the hori­zon level?
• Is noise, or image arti­facts distracting?
• Is it over or under exposed?

On to the awards night. Many thanks must be extended to Spec­tra and to Dig­i­tal Begin­ners for a won­der­ful night. Drink and con­ver­sa­tion flowed in equal mea­sure. I got a few moments to speak with Dave, and he explained his sort­ing approach. When sort­ing a thou­sand photo’s, he relied solely on:

…whether the stu­dent answered the ques­tion! Whether the photo showed the exotic nature of travel.

You will note that I high­lighted “exotic”. Were my entries suit­ably exotic? Short answer…

No.

Truth be told, shots of the sun­set are two a penny, like­wise of the Syd­ney Har­bour Bridge and the Taj Mahal. I can’t fault Dave’s choices for the win­ners of the com­pe­ti­tion. Con­grat­u­la­tions to all of them. I will come away hav­ing learnt a valu­able les­son, and with a renewed drive to push myself as a pho­tog­ra­pher. The kicker… for each of the shots that won, I have sim­i­lar or bet­ter (in my hum­ble opin­ion ) in my library. They are not going to win any com­pe­ti­tions sit­ting there!