Animals Nominees – Michael’s 2013 Photo Contest
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Another GREAT set of images. The animal category is always really interesting to me because there are a lot of images of birds, dogs and cats, but there are also a number of truly unique & interesting animals. I allowed the 3 peacock images as one example of something I see as a judge; occasionally you see an absolutely stunning image, which in it’s own right would place very high in any contest, but when other photographers have submitted nearly the exact same image, it becomes extremely difficult to single out which one is better, and in some cases, such as the traditional ‘Sunflower’ shot I tend to see every year in the Macro category, I tend to not advance similar images to the next level of judging because they are too similar and what that means to me is, they didn’t find some thing to differentiate themselves from others.
I look for ‘Show Stoppers’ something that makes me literally stop everything and study the image carefully. Occasionally words will just pop out of my mouth like ‘WOW….’, ‘Amazing….’ etc. Sometimes I cannot even put my finger exactly on why they are so good, but when I start involuntarily making these exclamations, they typically go to the finalists.
If your image didn’t make the cut, this is a GREAT learning opportunity to study the ones that did, and ask yourself how you can improve in your own images.
Congratulations to all of our excellent nominees!
Please allow the player a few moments to load
Another GREAT set of images. The animal category is always really interesting to me because there are a lot of images of birds, dogs and cats, but there are also a number of truly unique & interesting animals. I allowed the 3 peacock images as one example of something I see as a judge; occasionally you see an absolutely stunning image, which in it’s own right would place very high in any contest, but when other photographers have submitted nearly the exact same image, it becomes extremely difficult to single out which one is better, and in some cases, such as the traditional ‘Sunflower’ shot I tend to see every year in the Macro category, I tend to not advance similar images to the next level of judging because they are too similar and what that means to me is, they didn’t find some thing to differentiate themselves from others.
I look for ‘Show Stoppers’ something that makes me literally stop everything and study the image carefully. Occasionally words will just pop out of my mouth like ‘WOW….’, ‘Amazing….’ etc. Sometimes I cannot even put my finger exactly on why they are so good, but when I start involuntarily making these exclamations, they typically go to the finalists.
If your image didn’t make the cut, this is a GREAT learning opportunity to study the ones that did, and ask yourself how you can improve in your own images.
Congratulations to all of our excellent nominees!
