Feedback request- nsture photo

[CIC]

Hello fellow photo artists

I have shot the following photo using Tamron 90mm AF lens (non-VC).
For those who are accustomed to the Salon world, I intend to submit this image in the PSA PIDC section.

I am enclosing both the cropped and uncropped versions for your reference. Please share your valuable feedback.

Thank you all.

[Manfred M]

I left the PSA a number of years ago and did not bother entering any competitions there.

I believe your image would be disqualified because it contains your logo; these are forbidden in any competition that I have ever run across.

I would not expect it to score well (I sat on a PSA rules international competition in 2022). The lack of detail in the snail and leaf would get negative comment (due to the strong back lighting), as would the bright, overwhelming sun that shows artifacts. The leaf is not sharp and quite distracting and the snail is not all that sharp either. The orange colour cast will likely draw negative comments as well.

If I were on the jury, I would score this image with a 5 (out of a maximum of 10 points).

[CIC]

Thank you for your valuable feedback.
Please ignore the watermark as it is automatically applied when I export an image for web. The one I intend to submit does not have the watermark.

Regarding the sun, I'm not sure about the source of artifacts. I hardly edited the photo. I can open up the shadows on both the snail and the leaf, but wouldn't that make the image more documentary (ish)?

[Manfred M]

Regarding the sun, I'm not sure about the source of artifacts.

This is most likely from the conversion to 8-bit JPEG; check to see if it is in the original raw file.

I hardly edited the photo.

If you look at most, if not all of the images that do well in competitions, the submissions are aggressively retouched, especially in areas of local exposure adjustment (dodging and burning). Judges tend to favour images with most values in the mid-tones and lacking the extreme highlights and shadows.

This is true even in the nature competitions where traditional retouching that was done in the "wet darkroom" is allowed.

I can open up the shadows on both the snail and the leaf, but wouldn't that make the image more documentary (ish)?

No, it would give a more interesting image that looks well lit. A lot of photographers that enter competitions / salons would have used a fill flash to take this shot; the leaf and snail look to be the main subjects here. The way you have presented this image, it looks like you were shooting the sun and the other elements are incidental.

I suggest you spend time studying images that have done well in competitions and emulate what the photographers have done there. Images that I submit to salons and other high level competitions have hours of work in post-processioning before they are submitted.

[CIC]

Thank you for your feedback. There are other images in this series. I shall post a few here for your valuable review.

[Geoff F]

The general composition does not work for me. But I have never understood the decision of photographic judges. None of the CinC Monthly Competition images which has had my vote has ever won. Not one of them! So perhaps it is just me having weird photographic tastes.

Certainly post some more examples for us to consider.

[pnodrog]

I find your square crop a bit too tight. I would prefer a little more room at both the top and on the right.

[Manfred M]

The general composition does not work for me. But I have never understood the decision of photographic judges. None of the CinC Monthly Competition images which has had my vote has ever won. Not one of them! So perhaps it is just me having weird photographic tastes.

Certainly post some more examples for us to consider.

In the national organizations that belong to FIAP (Fédération Internationale de l'Art Photographique) - this is where most Club Photography operates under, judging is based on three primary areas:

1. Technical - which is a combination of both the technical choices made and how well they were executed;
2. Composition - which is how the elements in the image are arranged, how space (negative space) is utilized and how well distracting elements are handled; and
3. The "Wow!" factor - i.e. attributes of an image that grabs and holds the viewers attention. That could be the subject, the impact of the image, etc.

Scores are usually marked out of 10 possible points, with half points often being used. The higher the score, the more important the Wow! factor becomes. In most competitions, the typical score for an image will be 6 to 7.

[DanK]

While there are clearly criteria that often enter into judges' decisions, I think it's important not to lose sight of the huge amount of subjectivity involved. Last year, I entered a landscape into a local club competition. It was judged very poorly, in part because I deliberately broke the scene in the center of the vertical axis. It was subsequently juried into a museum exhibit.

Some years ago, I had occasion to hear judgments from two professionals in two separate contexts. Both where curators of photography. One of them judged as excellent a photo that looked to me like a snapshot taken for an insurance adjuster. It showed a fallen tree crushing a metal fence on the edge of a tennis court. It wasn't level, and it was very drab, lacking in contrast. I would have considered it a discard. In the other case, the judge showed a few photos that she was particularly pleased to have acquired. One was an amorphous black blob with small random white dots scattered about. It looked like finger painting by a 20-month-old.

In this case, however, I agree with some of the comments. My first reaction was: are the leaf and slug supposed to be a silhouette? It's too light for that, and not crisply enough in focus. Or is it supposed to show detail? In the latter case, I agree with Manfred.

The sun is less clear to me. It dominates, probably more than you want. However, having the antenna pointing toward it is a nice compositional element.

[Manfred M]

While there are clearly criteria that often enter into judges' decisions, I think it's important not to lose sight of the huge amount of subjectivity involved. Last year, I entered a landscape into a local club competition. It was judged very poorly, in part because I deliberately broke the scene in the center of the vertical axis. It was subsequently juried into a museum exhibit.

Unfortunately the quality of judges does vary and some are very much rule-bound, rather than looking at the image as a whole and seeing if and how well it works. There is a strong element of subjectivity in judging any image... Personal tastes and biases do get in the way too.

Some years ago, I had occasion to hear judgments from two professionals in two separate contexts. Both where curators of photography. One of them judged as excellent a photo that looked to me like a snapshot taken for an insurance adjuster. It showed a fallen tree crushing a metal fence on the edge of a tennis court. It wasn't level, and it was very drab, lacking in contrast. I would have considered it a discard. In the other case, the judge showed a few photos that she was particularly pleased to have acquired. One was an amorphous black blob with small random white dots scattered about. It looked like finger painting by a 20-month-old.

Welcome to the world of Fine Art photography. This issue runs rampant through that community and there is an almost allergic reaction to anything most people might want to hang on their walls... They are an in-crowd that make up rules (much like the fashion industry) and decide what is "in" and what is not.

These are the same people that ooh and aah over the "artist's statement" and don't even bother to look at the work. Intent outweighs the ability to execute. I have very little time for this crowd.

[DanK]

Welcome to the world of Fine Art photography. This issue runs rampant through that community and there is an almost allergic reaction to anything most people might want to hang on their walls... They are an in-crowd that make up rules (much like the fashion industry) and decide what is "in" and what is not.

These are the same people that ooh and aah over the "artist's statement" and don't even bother to look at the work. Intent outweighs the ability to execute. I have very little time for this crowd.

That was exactly the issue in at least one of these two instances. The black blob as in the curator's view an interesting concept; the photographer placed radioactive waste soil from the Fukuykiama reactor disaster on photo paper to get the image. I don't think that's a particularly interesting concept, and I certainly wouldn't want it on my walls.