Results and Feedback for the "Competition" Weekly Photography Assignment

[keithsnell]

Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Competition" assignment.  The guidelines for this assignment were to compose an image of a competition, striving to convey the emotion of the competition in your images.  We almost had an eight-way tie for People's Choice, but in the end, Melissa's Scrabble Tension image and Sue Pepin's Competitive Fishing image pulled ahead.  Congratulations Melissa and Sue.  I suspect viewers were impressed with the photographers' creative interpretation of "competition" when they voted for these images.

Scrabble Tension
Tied for People's Choice
Photographed by Melissa Stevens

Competitive Fishing
Tied for People's Choice
Photographed by Sue Pepin

I've awarded Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit to Alan's image titled Zack trying to get the inning's third out!  I thought this image did a great job portraying the emotion of a little league baseball game, with the look of concentration on the pitcher's face, and the boys in the background poised to spring for the ball if it was hit.  I couldn't read the EXIF data, so don't know what focal length or aperture were used for the shot, but suspect that a wider aperture (or longer focal length) might have been enough to blur the background so it was less of a distraction.  Still, great job capturing the emotion of the game.

Zack trying to get the inning's third out!
Editor's Choice for Artistic Merit
Photographed by Alan Albrecht

I've awarded Editor's Choice for Technical Merit to Rick's Sporting Clays Shooter image.  As Rick mentioned when he posted the image, the timing required to get a shot like this is extremely challenging.  He also did a great job selecting an optimum aperture and shutter speed for the shot.  The aperture of f6.3 resulted in enough depth of field to capture detail on the shooter and shotgun, while sufficiently bluring the distant portions of the scene to provide the perception of depth and help concentrate the viewers attention on the foreground action.  Choosing an appropriate shutter speed was probably the toughest challenge, and I like that the selected speed of 1/400th was fast enough to freeze the motion of the shooter, but still allowed some motion blur on the spent cartridge as it flew through the air.  Great job Rick.

Sporting Clays Shooter
Editor's Choice for Technical Merit
Photographed by Rick Pepin

Viewers are encouraged to respond to this thread describing why you like a particular image, or think it was particularly successful at meeting the guidelines of the assignment.

Thank you to everyone that participated in the "Competition" assignment.

Keith