An April Contest NON-Entry...

[regnaD kciN]

Since I'm hosting, I wasn't allowed to enter a photo in the April contest, but, if I had been able to, this would have been my submission:

One In Every Crowd...

[RoyGBiv]

1. Oh that is just excellent ...

I LOVE this.

[F.Gordon]

2. I don't see why the host/ess can't play

:shrug:

But in this case... it was probably a good thing.
:evilgrin:

Quite excellent!!!

[intheflow]

3. Host/ess not being able to play...

This came out of the early days of the contest. When only 10 of us hung out here and Raging In Miami was winning every month. We figured if there was an extraordinary photographer who won every month, we'd open up the contest by taking them out of the running during the month they host. And then, the same person wouldn't get stuck hosting month after month, as well.

[regnaD kciN]

8. For the same reason...

...that it should be illegal for secretaries of state to also be the campaign manager for one of the candidates. :grr:

While someone running the photo contest here can't call in Diebold to run the polling ;-) , there are a few ways an unscrupulous host could skew the results in his or her favor. They could, for example, draw up the preliminary groups so that their photo was with the weakest entries, while all of their strongest competitors were lumped together in the same group. They could also arrange the order of the photos in the poll to their advantage -- for example, I don't think I've ever seen a poll here where the photograph placed last in the polling order won, so they could put their strongest competitor in that position. And they could either let the voting run late or close it down a bit early ("something came up, and I had to change the time period") to get or keep their photo in the lead.

But the most pernicious problem is that the host wouldn't have to actually decide to rig the contest -- if their photo won, some people (especially among the other competitors) would likely suspect that they had done something underhanded, even if there was no evidence to support it. And if that host were to then go on to win a third time in a row? I think you'd wind up seeing people fall away from these contests, and possibly the group itself.

Besides all this, I think there's something to be said for giving a different photographer a chance to win each month. Like it or not, this is really not a "let's find the best photographer in the group" contest -- if we were looking for a strictly meritocratic contest procedure, we wouldn't have the Lounge Lizards decide it for us, rather we would bring in a jury of photographic experts to look at each month's entries and choose a winner. This is, as has often been stated, for fun...and I see no reason not to keep it that way.

[intheflow]

4. WOW!

That's an eye-popper, all right. What a gorgeous shot. Where was it taken?

[regnaD kciN]

7. Skagit tulip fields...

These have been a source of frustration for me because, while I have been able to get many good close-ups of tulips at one of the gardens there, I'm about the only photographer in the Seattle area who hasn't been able to get a good wide-angle shot of the fields themselves. Every time I am able to get up there, the weather doesn't cooperate. Yesterday was no exception -- although the weather report said it was supposed to be sunny, it was overcast the whole time. And wide panoramas of colorful tulip fields are worthless when you've got an ugly bright-gray sky overhead. :grr:

This was literally the only decent shot I got all day.

And it looks like tomorrow will be just as bad weatherwise. This weekend, when it's supposed to be sunny the whole time, I have a committment to help out on a film shoot, so won't be able to make it. By Monday, they'll have picked most of the flowers, and started plowing up the fields. :-(

[regnaD kciN]

10. Better living through Photoshop...

After griping about the overcast conditions every time I've tried to do a Skagit tulip fields photo, it occured to me: I'm a modern digital photographer, with Photoshop available to me. There's no reason to be stymied by the Rumsfeld Doctrine ("you take pictures with the sky you have, not the sky you wish you could have").

Herewith: the Skagit tulip fields, with a little help from the sky at Nolte State Park last month.



And here's the original for comparison purposes, complete with featureless, solid-gray, ugly sky.



So, I've finally got a decent tulip field photo. Now, I can die in peace (not really). ;-)

[Blue_In_AK]

11. Good job...

I wouldn't have known if you hadn't told.

[DS1]

5. What is it juxstaposing?

[NV Whino]

6. Whoa!

You might warn us to put on sun glasses first. Beautiful shot.

[CC]

9. I love this pic

and it would of had my vote. Simple beautiful.