Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by saintaugust:
it's doing almost as well as my challenge entries...

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by Gordon:
This is roughly something I posted elsewere about this image.

Personally I was one who gave it a 10. For me it was the most enjoyable and thought provoking image in the challenge, far better than a lot of the frankly not so great 'obvious' sports shots.

It reminded me of a lot of the Suprematism work of Kasimir Malevich, famous for his black squares on a white canvas and other such derided 'nonsense'. Yes it looks like a joke. But there is a serious meaning worth studying behind his images and I found something similar in this grey square.

DPChallenge is a team sport - people easily identify with their own team - Canon, Nikon etc. The forums are often full of this. The carefully matched grey square to the background brought this forward in my mind, along with the title of 'challenge' The simple bounding box between the image and the site demarked the space and all in all, this shot gave me a whole lot more to think about than any other. So the picture represents team sport, and also action, given that it is part of a live challenge.

The fact that you may or may not have entered it with any of this context doesn't matter either. We don't get to know intent or see details while voting. The entire field of deconstructionism is all about any viewer having at least as valid an interpretation of a work as the creator has, and in this case, my interpretation was worth a 10. It was by far and away the one shot I looked at for the longest time. It was certainly the best in my opinion. It is entirely in topic. It was the most enjoyable, stimulating and thought provoking image in this challenge, for me.

a random black rectangle with no thought would probably not have stimulated these ideas in my head - this more carefully constructed entry did.

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by heida:
Hey congrats on the brown And on 4th place in Burt Reynolds! :)

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by e301:
Posted this in the forums; think I'll leave a copy here too.

"Having looked through the votes and comments now, I think the complainers are wrong. As a shot of it's type, 'competition' is very very effectively done. Think of this: it isn't a standard 4x3 aspect ratio; the grey has been perfectly matched to the site background; it is a photograph of nothing - rather than any old shot darkened completely and then lightened to the right shade. It shows imagination, thought, and care in execution.

It deals with ideas and concepts that are almost completely out of place here - and a challenge is the only sensible way to display it on the site. Had it been put into a portfolio and a thread linked to it I think it could only have struggled to 100 views or so - as of right now it has 1400 or so.

I can't believe that those who commented along the lines of 'stop wasting my time' actually spent any time at all thinking about it - whilst it was obviously going to be voted down massively, there is certainly more to it than the Burt Reynolds blank black 4x3 shot. Intellectually, the ideas it provokes may hold little interest for a vast majority of this site's competitors, but there is equally no need for an outright dismissal of the thought and ideas behind the shot.

I can absolutely agree with any vote it recieved - all the way through the range, from leaving room in one's own scale for other shots to rank above it, to acknowledgment of a little intrigue, to outright dislike, and the sliding scale in between. Interesting to note that it recieved at least one vote at each score.

But what it isn't, is wasting anyone's time."

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by train:
A ski team in an avalanche great one
7 10s that is more than I got! I suppose that shows something about this site. LOL!

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by stormy:

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by Mona:
I have seen so many photos now so it was refreshing with nothing.

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by Gabriel:
No, this was not a "performance" or anything similar (but now that you pointed it out, I think that this empty frame could really represent the competition happening here for all of us).

I wanted to know how you would react to this apparently missing picture, and the good thing is that I learned something.

Some of the comments (before photo validation, after the "impact" was quite different) are really imaginatives.
Some people are able to describe a scene, although there is nothing in this photo.

This makes me think that perhaps photographers should have a strong imagination. This is a new thing to improve for me.

So on the list of things that could make a good photographer, we have:
*good technical ability
*ability to compose scene
*ability to "see" things

and now we also have:
*strong imagination (ability to compose shoots before seeing them?)

Message edited by author 2004-09-22 03:07:32.

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by kiwiness:
Well that was an amusing read of comments :))) Congrats on the brown ribbon, looks like you fooled a lot of people :)

Competition
by Gabriel

Comment by ws6_ta:
seven 10's, 65 comments, 1 favorites

As smokeditor put it: Pure Genius :)

Message edited by author 2004-09-22 00:21:28.