Assignment 1 "Harmony" -- Congratulations Keith B!

[Rodger]

Other sites, such as Digital Photography School, do the same type of assignment task with only newly shot photographs. Every now and again I chip in to that, but this is a chance to be a bit different.

I'm going to agree with musickna on this one. DPS has the "go and shoot" style contest, let's leave this open to old shots.


-Rodger

[DavidEccleston]

I think it should be based around going out and shooting something new in line with the theme

Depends on the theme. I can think of 3 categories of themes.


Geographic / Seasonal - If your theme is "Winter Snow" you're going to upset theAustralians, not to mention the Floridians, the Texans, etc. This should not be limited to new shots.


Specific - If you have a theme like "Odd looking hat", then sure, you can limit it to new shots, but you'll annoy someone who has some bizarre old picture laying around. In this case the theme is specific enough that not many people will have a good entry just sitting around, and most will have to go out to get a nice shot anyway. There is no need to force the few who have a neat shot to go out and find another.


General - The first theme is a good example. "Harmony" is vague enough to get people to be creative, yet also vague enough that everyone will have an existing shot that they can use. In these cases, you *could* force people to go out and find a new shot... then again, we haven't seen 99% of people's existing work. Perhaps this could be limited to "not previously uploaded" work. Not necessarily new, but new to us.





If you really want people to be getting new shots, then the best bet is to aim for a more specific theme. Not so specific that a shot cannot be found, but an odd combination or something people aren't likely to have taken a photo of before... and if they have, that's fine, as long as it's new to us.

[Dan Fleming]

David, Excellent insight. The general idea was to get more new photos, but I can see that a combination of new/old competitions would be good also. Thanks.


dan

[Chuck Lee]

Congrats Kieth.


I just wanted to share a photo I thought fit the topic. I didn't know it was turning into a contest. Thanksto all who voted for my shot.


I've entered a few over at DPS in past years but I find I'm way to busy most of the time to keep up with the weekly assignments. It's a great tool to force you to produce creative work on a dead line.


If you are going to topic the post as "Assignment", that would imply photos taken after the assignment date. (that didn't cross my mind until now)


If you are going to judge photos based on a topic then I would call the title of the post "Contest" That would imply a "best-of" taken anytime.


However, ifthe forum decides to do this there will have to be rules and a qualification judge. In this layed back senario I could easily sumbit a photo I did not take. This is why DPS scrutinizes the entries so closely. It's very time consuming.


Now, you say "but Chuck, we're just doing this to have fun and share our work." Agreed, but once the "contest" style format is initiated we as forum members will open the door to recognition seekers and those looking to build their photo resume's.


I really like the share and critique and learn aspect of this forum. I also really like the size of this community and the class of talented and knowledgable photographers posting here. I'm not sure if topic based photo contest threads are very beneficial. There are a ton of online photo contest ongoing in other forums. dpreview, fredmiranda, DPS, etc.


It could be that a thread is started to share and talk about entries made to other forum contests. That way, no one in this community will be burdened with the overseership of a contest. Just pick a topic contest from dpreview to be the bi-montly or monthly contest thread. Post your entry here as well so that members can follow along.


Or, as Bryan suggested, break "Your Best of Nature Photos" & "Your Best Portrait Photos"into sub-catagories like they do at dpreview. Instead of calling it "Best of" just create a thread with the topic. That way, we can post ongoing work to share, critique,& learn with more specificity. To keep the size of the threads respectable, start a new thread for each topicon the 1st day of each month. The Best of Nature thread is huge. Searching it can be quite a burden. i.e. Nature, Nov09; Formal Portrait, Nov09; Candid Portrait, Nov09; Macro, Nov09; Street, Nov09; Architectural, Nov09....etc.


That's my 2.341987 cents. []