Results of 3rd April Photography Competition
Hi All,
Another week over in no time and another week of excellent submissions from you all. Thanks to everyone for participating in this week’s photo competition. Thank you to all who submitted photographs and for those watching and supporting other photographers. I hope that you find this photography competition entertaining and useful as a learning tool to improve your photography even during lockdown. I spend a considerable amount of time going through these images to construct positive and constructive criticism to help me and you become a better photographer and I hope you all are taking the time to review everyone’s picture and learn from them.
This week’s theme is a complex subject and hard to communicate. It can be taken literally as the difference between light and dark, colour and no colour, sharp and blurry or even by emotions or lack of them.
It’s very difficult to define what contrast is as a whole and I have probably picked a theme that was harder to judge for me than to actually take a picture for some of you.
I could have taken an image, opened a histogram and pick a winner that way. However, there is so much more to contrast than a graph of shadows and whites.
As per previous competition, I have divided all submissions into Tier 1, 2 and 3. Tier 1 represents the best photographic submissions followed by Tier 2 and 3.
On a little side note to ensure we are clear. If you are viewing these photos on your mobile phone, the description of each image and the artists name is underneath each image.
If you are on an iPad or PC, description is either left or right of the image.
As usual, always remember, that these photo submissions are my opinion, that does not necessarily make this right or wrong. I simply judge them based on the rules outlined in the rules of the competition.
Hopefully, some feedback will help you learn something new and make you excel in your future photography.
Without further delays, enjoy these beautiful photos and people at it’s best.
Winning Submission
Congratulations to Donal Ring for winning this week’s competition with this beautiful image of an Egret.
(Yes, I had to google for the name of this bird :D)
Donal Ring
We have a good example of high contrast with bright whites and deep blacks in this very simple but beautiful image.
My only criticism would be composition and crop of this photo. I would feel a bit more comfortable if there was the same amount of space above the egret’s head as there is under him to square the image and make him the centre of the composition. Regardless of this, your photo fits the theme well and shows good contrast. Well done.
Tier 1 - Contrast and Mystery
Here are the images from the fellow photographers for Tier 1. Well done and congratulations.
Kasia Katarzyna
Well done with this image Kasia. I love the setting and feeling of this photo, we have nice deep blacks and good contrast. This is probably my favourite photo of all submissions. On my own preference, I would love to see a person in this photograph, it would really finish the feeling of this image.
My only complaints regarding this photo is that the bright parts of the image would need to go much brighter to give the photo higher contrast.
Teresa Vanin
Congratulations on getting third place with your stunning image. I can see a lot of effort has gone into this image. I would say this is the most creative photo submission of the week. While the contrast between black and white is not huge, you have great colour contrast and even more, contrast between movement and depth of field contrast. A truly great example of taking all aspects of photography and combining them together.
Marilyn Lawless
Well done Marilyn, another cracking photograph. Once again good creativity and uniqueness and fitting on how many people feel at this moment during lock down. We have adequate contrast and emphasis on the difference between light and dark. I would prefer to see a little bit more brightness on the brighter parts of this image, but that’s only a minor point.
Miguel Rueda
Congratulations on getting into Tear 1. You have created some nice contrast between light and dark colours on the vegetables. My only tip would be regarding composition, your photo submission was unusually long, try following the rules of thirds when cropping your image.
Tier 2 - Contrast
Closely followed by Tier 2 Submissions.
Sorina Popescu
Well done on topping Tier 2 Sorina. A very nice example of good composition and filling the frame with your subject. We have high colour contrast and contrast in terms of focus and depth of field.
Saithi Bavugi
Well done for joining the top of tier 2, we have this nice and mysterious image of what I assume is yourself and this image would have done great in our portrait competition a few weeks back. My only tip would be to try and brighten up your face. That’s something that can be done as you’re taking the picture or with a little bit of post-production editing to boost the whites and darken the shadows.
Bried Collins
Well done Bried. Another great image this week. I can see lots of effort went into setting this up. We have nice bright fruits to give the image good colour contrast, however, I feel you would have been able to push this a step further with giving the image more shadows and making this picture stand out.
Try to move the background further away, this would darken the background and reflect less light back on the fruit, giving the image a little bit more contrast.
Gavin Doyle
Well done Gavin with your submission, I think if I was looking purely at the histogram, this image would have won. I like this image as it has good contrast & good composition. However, I am missing a subject or point of interest. I feel if we had a clear subject, my eyes would not have to wander so much to find a point of interest in this photo.
Martin Goebbels
Well done Martin, you have composed and created a nice image to show contrast and using items that we have around the house to create something that is interesting.
My tip would be to try to get rid or replace the bottle with something else transparent and make these capsules of vitamins into some sort of hot charcoal or lava. You could create an interesting landscape or setting with a bit of messing around and creativity.
Tier 3
Followed by the last Tier in our photo competition. Thanks so much for participating.
Manoela Martins
Thanks Manoela for your submission. This cat is a great silhouette and a good example between light and dark, however, there is a lot of distractions around it, with wires and chimneys everywhere. I think You could have submitted a better example with less distractions.
Gbadebo Bellos
A gorgeous image and very well composed with dark blacks and shadows. However, in my opinion, were missing contrast here, while we have nice dark blacks, we are lacking highlights. Contrast as explained with other images is the stark difference between one extreme and the other. This image is mostly middle grey and darks, therefore missing contrast.
Yashi Sahu
Thanks for the submission and your example of contrast. It’s a good submission.
Tips on future submissions is to try and isolate the colour pink and yellow, using HSL tool in Lightroom or Hue/Colour Adjustment Layer in Photoshop. I did a quick edit and posted it below for reference.
Yashi Sahu
Edit of the same image and isolating the colours. You can suddenly see or feel much higher contrast than before.
Olive O’Brien
Thanks for this beautiful submission of cherry blossom petals. However, I feel that there is a lack of contrast in this image. Pretty much all the petals are in shadow and there’s very little colour other than the pink. I think if I had to re-shoot this image, I would get down much lower to the ground and closer to the petals, this way you would see more of the green grass and would contrast better with the pink petals.
Deborah O'Loughlin
Thanks for your submission of this beautiful scene. I can see some contrast between light and dark and it is a very pretty picture. However, I cannot really say I see a whole lot of contrast in the traditional form. Everything is dark, and the leaves are closer to mid tones than they are to highlights.
There is some colour contrast, but everything is quiet far away and therefore I find it difficult to point out a subject or a point of interest in this picture. Forests and parks are a great place to find some contrast as the light is coming through the tree branches or leaves, but I would focus on something specific so that your viewer can focus on.
Thank you all so much for participating. It’s great so see such enthusiasm.
If you’re up for it, click HERE to see our 2nd weeks competition and submit your next amazing photo :)
Regards
Evan