2022 - Image of the Week #50

[Kayaker72]

Welcome to TDP forum's "Image of the Week" competition. Each week photographers may submit their images for the title of "Image of the Week." Weekly winners will then compete on a monthly, quarterly, and in our annual poll for the title of "TDP Forum Image of the Year."

• Week 50 entry period will be from Monday, December 5th through/including Sunday, December 11th.
• Please provide a title for your image.
• This is an open competition for landscape, portrait, architectural, macro, or any other appropriate photographic style.
• Images should have been either recently taken or processed.
• You may make two entries per week. If the total number of entries exceeds 10, unless otherwise specified, the first entry will be added to the poll.
• The weekly poll will be open for 3 days.

[DavidEccleston]

Soooo... it looks like this new format with a poll instead of judges isn't working out. Can those of you who were still participating until recently share what you liked about the previous format?

I tried to give feedback when I was judging, but I was never certain if it was appreciated or not... For image styles where I know next to nothing (landscapes, Karsa's astro/northern lights shots), it was hard to give meaningful feedback, but I tried to give *something* for each shot. Was this type of feedback wanted? Is the lack of interest in a purely poll based image of the week down to the lack of feedback?

I also noticed a drop in participation when we switched from Monthly to Weekly. I know to me it just felt like a constant pressure to produce something each week, and the quarter end with the same image being in a weekly result, monthly result, then quarterly result.... you just get sick of voting for the same image. The final image in a quarter never stands a chance. What can fix it? A bi-weekly schedule? Skipping monthly, and doing quarterly polls, but delaying that vote by a month to try and prevent voting fatigue?

Lets use this space try to figure out what can revitalize this for the new year. Comment on my thoughts, or post your own ideas.

[Joel Eade]

Just for me personally, this is a busy time for family events and a slow time of year for the type of photography I like most so I am not getting any new material to submit.

I still vote in all the polls and am willing to judge most any time.

I will submit when I can ..... maybe delete the suggestion that images should be recent or recently processed?

[Minerve101]

I no longer shoot regularly; now, photography is mostly in conjunction with some trip or event. This means I now have only occasional small batches of photos, nothing weekly. I have a store of many images that could benefit from better processing. I could occasionally submit one of those in the future.

I did appreciate the comments of judges, especially when I was just picking up digital photography. No one seems to use this forum for such a purpose any more.

I would be happy to judge photos at any time that is helpful.

I confess that my gear now exceeds my technique, so that I log on to TDP less than when I was always considering a new acquisition.

Danny Watson

[Jonathan Huyer]

I do most of my photography on guided wildlife tours, and I typically don't enter those photos on this forum. So my submissions are fairly sparse at the best of times. However I think the voting format is good, and I always participate in it.

I like this entire forum, largely because everyone on it is helpful, polite, supportive, and very knowledgeable. So I'm keen to see it continue as a going concern, in whatever format is most productive. It's quite okay to change things up... we could go with a monthly contest if that's better for people.

[Kayaker72]

Phew...back from a bunch of travel.

Personally, I enjoy the weekly if there are at least 4 to 5 of us entering. If not....well, my preference is to get to that.

I am not surprised by the last 4 weeks, we usually hit lows in entries in winter. As I recall, January is the worst.

As for new formats. Sure. In 2022, do we want to try, every two weeks with the winner (6) going to quarterly vote? Monthly with the top 2 going to quarterly? As odd as it sounds, the limitation here is that a poll can't have more than 10 entries. So, we just need a format that doesn't exceed 10 entries at any stage. That is why we had a judge for the weekly initially and the point of the quarterly (I would have preferred all the monthly winners be in the year end vote).

Anyway, I am back from travel...both to see family in Idaho and then a pretty intense work meeting (sorry for the delay in this week's poll). Pics are coming.

And Jonathan....personally I would feel free to drop some trip photos in the contests. Up to you, of course.

[Jayson]

I like the suggestion for the new format. I hadn't shot for a long time, had a couple weeks where I had free time (which was the influx of Heron photos) but then busy again. I plan on trying to shoot regularly again now that things have calmed down and participate more on here. Sorry I've been away for a while.

[Kayaker72]

Hi Everyone...as we are already discussing it here, any thoughts on a new format?

We can have 10 entries in a poll.

Do we want to have:

1. A poll every two weeks with the winners going to quarterlies (so no monthly winner)
2. Bring back judges somehow? Either the weekly judges or maybe we have three judges that each pick a winner to move onto quarterlies (so 9 at quarterlies).

Any other thoughts?

[Jayson]

I'm thinking Polls as suggested in #1

[Jonathan Huyer]

Me too --- polls are good! And thanks very much for your work in keeping this going.