Another heavily entered category with the top photographs easily winnowed down. As in general news, photographers should try and go beyond making a record of what happened and to try and scratch the surface a bit more to reveal something better. A few photographs would have benefited from slight cropping, just to clean things up a bit. One judge says he sometimes likes dirty or messy frames but is not averse to making sure the little things on the edges don't distract the viewer. It's often on a case by case basis during the editing process.
The top two entires had nice layering to keep it from being a flat photograph. The compositions were very strong as well and the photographers paid close attention, and waited for the exact moment before releasing the shutter.
The girl with the bubbles is an example of a photograph that had incredible potential but we don't know the circumstances under which this photograph was made. We were thinking that a longer lens might have cleaned up the background a bit and allowed the bubbles ot be more prominent. Again, this had the potential to be a winner.
The magician photo was an example of a situation where more post processing would have raised this work. Little things like making sure the highlights aren't blown out and some burning around the edges to push the viewer's eyes to the centre. Again, the diamond is there, it just needs some buffing to bring it out. We really liked these winners and they made us smile.
Judges:
Fred Lum/The Globe and Mail, Theresa Suzuki/The Globe and Mail, Tim McKenna/The Globe and Mail
Judges Comments
Another heavily entered category with the top photographs easily winnowed down. As in general news, photographers should try and go beyond making a record of what happened and to try and scratch the surface a bit more to reveal something better. A few photographs would have benefited from slight cropping, just to clean things up a bit. One judge says he sometimes likes dirty or messy frames but is not averse to making sure the little things on the edges don't distract the viewer. It's often on a case by case basis during the editing process. The top two entires had nice layering to keep it from being a flat photograph. The compositions were very strong as well and the photographers paid close attention, and waited for the exact moment before releasing the shutter. The girl with the bubbles is an example of a photograph that had incredible potential but we don't know the circumstances under which this photograph was made. We were thinking that a longer lens might have cleaned up the background a bit and allowed the bubbles ot be more prominent. Again, this had the potential to be a winner. The magician photo was an example of a situation where more post processing would have raised this work. Little things like making sure the highlights aren't blown out and some burning around the edges to push the viewer's eyes to the centre. Again, the diamond is there, it just needs some buffing to bring it out. We really liked these winners and they made us smile.