David GrunfeldNOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate
Judges Comments
A very thin category. It appears to us that many photos that are really not particularly strong get entered simply on the merit of having been on the scene of an incident. It does make culling the choices pretty easy. If you do not have a storytelling moment, some sort of peak spot news action, really powerful emotion, striking visuals, or combinations of some of those, then it's not going to make the cut. Another issue was the multiple-photo entries. Especially in spot news, the additional photos absolutely must complement each other. One weak photo can, and will, drag down the whole entry. This is especially true if you're only submitting a pair. We went back and forth with our first-second placement. In the end we decided the aesthetic elements of the truck fire, the light, she smoke, the immediacy of the working firefighters squeaked just over the second place image of the police executing a search warrant. The focus on the cops photo was a bit questionable, it needs really to be on the visible faces, not the backs of the guys in the foreground. The sense of drama was strong though, hence the debate over placement. We wondered aloud whether our third place choice was a counter-example to our critique about multiple image entries in this category. The man and dog watching firefighters work (out of the frame) is well done, clean, and with emotion, but other than the smoke hanging in the air, lacked context. So, maybe additional photos of the firefighting activity might have helped, but, if they weren't that strong, then it's good to have left them out, because on its own it was third place. Also, always crop to your subject matter, if you can't do it in-camera, do it later. A couple entries, most notably a murder scene with a very distracting and not relevant set of porch decorations in the frame, really exemplified the need.
Judges:
Sean D. Elliot/The Day, Michael G. Seamans/Morning Sentinel
Judges Comments
A very thin category. It appears to us that many photos that are really not particularly strong get entered simply on the merit of having been on the scene of an incident. It does make culling the choices pretty easy. If you do not have a storytelling moment, some sort of peak spot news action, really powerful emotion, striking visuals, or combinations of some of those, then it's not going to make the cut. Another issue was the multiple-photo entries. Especially in spot news, the additional photos absolutely must complement each other. One weak photo can, and will, drag down the whole entry. This is especially true if you're only submitting a pair. We went back and forth with our first-second placement. In the end we decided the aesthetic elements of the truck fire, the light, she smoke, the immediacy of the working firefighters squeaked just over the second place image of the police executing a search warrant. The focus on the cops photo was a bit questionable, it needs really to be on the visible faces, not the backs of the guys in the foreground. The sense of drama was strong though, hence the debate over placement. We wondered aloud whether our third place choice was a counter-example to our critique about multiple image entries in this category. The man and dog watching firefighters work (out of the frame) is well done, clean, and with emotion, but other than the smoke hanging in the air, lacked context. So, maybe additional photos of the firefighting activity might have helped, but, if they weren't that strong, then it's good to have left them out, because on its own it was third place. Also, always crop to your subject matter, if you can't do it in-camera, do it later. A couple entries, most notably a murder scene with a very distracting and not relevant set of porch decorations in the frame, really exemplified the need.