Inspiration:
Colour 1,
Colour 2,
Colour 3,
Colour 4,
Colour 5 and
Colour 6
The Theme:
Colour.
That's it. Dead simple - we want you to blow our socks off with a colourful image. Take a shot that screams “colour” at us and you'll be in with a chance.
Black and whites are not going to do well in this round.
What you need to know:
What else can I say? Round 2 of our Photographer of the Year competition brought some amazing entries. We challenged you to get close up and hundreds of you did just that and Harry Shepherd has grabbed himself an Olympus E400 for his amazing macro of a dewdrop.
Now it's time to get serious - time for round 3.
The special (modified) rules:
For this round there will be a maximum of three entries per member. When entries close, if you have 4 or more pictures submitted under your id then we will disqualify ALL your entries. If you submit more than 3 by accident or change your mind then either delete the other pictures or contact the site admin to delete them for you. But do this before entries close - if you don't then all your pictures will be deleted.
Oh and don't even think of using multiple accounts.
Entries are open now and close Monday 4th June. All pictures must be taken between 9th May 2007 and 4th June 2007. If there's any doubt about your picture's eligibility then we may ask you to prove it.
Whadaya mean COLOUR?
As always - it's up to you. We're leaving this as wide open as we can. Show us colour or what colour means to you. The clever ones out there could probably argue that black and white or a split toned picture is colour. That's cool - enter if you like. It's the other members you have to convince.
As always I have some suggestions:
- Check out Karen Parker's article on colour and get some ideas there
- Take a look at the images on this page - they are there for a reason. They all feature one or more colours very strongly.
- Look at your picture before you submit it. One colour? Great! Two or three? Pretty cool. 4 or more then it's starting to look weak (unless it's a cool rainbow effect like the bottles).
- No coloured pencils. Or poster paint. Really - it's been done too many times. To do well with these subjects you're going to have to produce something really stunning.
The winner:
This has always been a rule of the competition but I'll repeat it here. Member votes will be used as a guideline but the winner will be chosen by the editor using their sole discretion. Don't bother trying to rig the vote or register multiple times - I'm very interested to see how the members vote but I reserve the right to choose another picture for any reason I see fit.
With this in mind it's amazing nobody has tried to bribe me yet. Of course it wouldn't work but a new iPod would be nice. On the downside you'd be disqualified and banned form future competitions. On the upside I'd have a new iPod.
The Prize:
Last month was extraordinary. We gave away an Olympus E400 and the entries flooded in. There's no way we could top that for this competition. So we're doing it again.
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First placeThe winning picture will earn its photographer a brand new Olympus E400 with 14 - 42mm lens. 10 million pixels of DSLR worth over £500. Thought you'd be interested.
Now go take a picture.
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Guidelines for voting:
Here are my usual guidelines for voting. Note that we will not be disqualifying any picture on content (unless it's too rude). So yeah, people can submit black and whites. It's down to the voters to decide.
Remember that you don't have to enter to vote - any member can vote. But if you didn't enter then you have no chance of our top prize - why not enter the next one?
- Look through and see if there are any that just don't fit the subject to you. Do they say "colour"? Can you imagine why the photographer thought they did? If not then consider just not voting on these. If the picture doesn't fit that then don't give it one star, just don't vote on it.
- Have a glance at all the entries and decide on the ones that leap out and make you go "wow". Think about giving these 5 stars (you can give 5 stars to as many pictures as you like but obviously it makes no sense to give them all 5!)
- Look at the rest and judge them by your own criteria. Do you demand that shots are perfectly exposed and razor sharp? Fine, mark them accordingly. Do you give more weight to the subject or what the photographer was trying to do? Cool then give high marks where it's appropriate. Different people rate different attributes but with an active community like this everything will balance out.
- If you really think a picture fits the subject but has no merit whatsoever then give it one star. But why not take the time to explain why you did it?
If you find yourself giving more than 3 pictures one star then you really need to start a thread explaining how you think they can be improved?
It's very dispiriting for the entrants just to get low marks and no clues - please help them out so they can be better next time.
Isn't that why we're all here?
