Monthly Contest Winners

[rpcrowe]

I did a quickie survey of winners from various past monthly contests and divided them (somewhat arbitrarily) into categories.

The categories are somewhat fluid as in: Is an image of a barn in a field categorized as a landscape or architecture photo? My criteria was the size of the barn in the image. If it was large, I would call it an architectural image if it were small, it would be a landscape.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, here are the categories of images and the numbers of images from those categories that won for the last 76 monthly contests over six years!

Landscape/Seascape: 27
Portraits (formal and informal): 13
Animals (non-pet): 7
Animals (pets): 2
Birds: 6
Flowers: 3
Architecture (includes bridges): 8
Macro: 3
Miscellaneous (including art and street): 7

I wonder if the winners reflect the numbers entered in these categories but, that would be a large job to calculate...

[Shadowman]

Your query at the end is intriguing, also would/could the animals, birds, flowers be re-categorized as Nature increasing the tally of photographer's particular subject interests?

[rpcrowe]

Your query at the end is intriguing, also would/could the animals, birds, flowers be re-categorized as Nature increasing the tally of photographer's particular subject interests?

Certainly... my categories were completely arbitrary. One could divide the winners in any way one would like...

[Geoff F]

So why is it that images which get my vote never win (or very rarely get a second place).

Am I a bit weird in my choice of what makes a good image? Perhaps if I voted for another image instead of my true choice that one would have a better chance !

[Manfred M]

Richard - I wonder if the results you have noted have more to do with the types of images that people shoot rather than anything else. If one looks at the Nature & Architecture category, there are almost four times more entries there versus the People & Pets category. I suspect people enter their best work and this shows both in the entries and winning entries.

At a high level, the members here generally pick the strongest images in the group, without being experienced photography judges. My guess is that most experienced photographers will identify images that are strong from a technical view, have the elements well arranged in the frame and have something that they can connect with.

[rpcrowe]

With the notable exception of my dog photography, I probably shoot more images of people than any other category.

However, I suspect that I am a minority in this respect and would guess that most people (except for the mandatory family shots) shoot more landscapes than anything else except the always present sunset shots (which I guess that you could call a type of landscape)