Photo Contest

I’m trying to get some entries ready for the Entertainment Imaging employees photo contest. The entries I’m considering are at Gallery :: Photo Contest.

The contest categories are

  • Nature
  • People
  • Photojournalism
  • Architecture
  • …uh, there are one or two others, I think
  • Open

Open is used for things that don’t fit other categories, but it’s also supposed to be where we put pictures that have lots of effects applied. You’re only allowed two entries in each category, so you have to be careful that the ones you enter are the best ones you have in each category.

photo_contest/whale_jump_sharpenedI’ve got this one as a pretty strong entry for the Nature category. The only problem with it that I can see is that it’s a small picture – the judges like pictures that take up most of an 8.5×11″ page. I worry that blowing it up will make it too fuzzy.

photo_contest/baiyunAnother candidate for the Nature category is this picture of Baiyun. Yes, they specifically cautioned that pets go in Nature not in People. I took this picture of Baiyun in direct sunlight with the room behind him normally bright, so in contrast it came out very dark. I actually manually darkened a bit of the background where some light splashed in, and when you look at it in full magnification it doesn’t come out very well – I’m going to have to fix that, I think. I was using the “Clone Stamp” tool I think it’s called. But it would be better to select that area and just paint it black, I think.

photo_contest/kayakI had this picture that I like, but I wasn’t sure it was photo contest material. So I played with it a bit, and came up with this somewhat surreal picture, which I think I could enter it in the Open category. I like the idea of masking out Vicki and the kayak, and doing something with the rest of the picture, but I’m not sure that this “something” is the right “something”. I kind of liked it when I inversed the colours instead. Maybe I’ll put that up in the gallery and let you decide.

photo_contest/007_4ASince I have what I think are two good candidates for the Nature category, I’m not sure what to do with the remaining pictures, except this sculpture, being man made, could go in the Architecture category.