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DPChallenge Forums >> Challenge Results >> Adulthood...frustration boils over.
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Showing posts 26 - 50 of 64, (reverse)
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 12/05/2005 03:53:55 AM · #26
left you a comment, Doc.
 12/05/2005 04:11:17 AM · #27
I thought it was a well thought out and technically well done, gave you an 8 for it .
 12/05/2005 04:58:05 AM · #28
I gave you a 7, thought it was one of the better ones. Me too scored lower than I think my pic is worth but so be it, after all it was my choce to grab this last minute opportunity to participate.
 12/05/2005 05:33:15 AM · #29
I spent a lot of time looking at this one but I'm afraid you missed the mark and I believe the voters were generous.

I gave it a 5, I wanted to give it more but I never knew it was a log it looked like a rock to me. Believe me I reward images that dare to be different but this image was not one that I could reward. The first thing I noticed when opening was the texture of the background which didn't add to the appeal of the bokeh. I remember reading here recently about never using long titles, this was the case with your also short and simple.

You must realise if you want to be different you will find it a lot harder to score high here this site does not reward artistic values of images as it should. What is the alternative ? well you could keep putting in pretty pictures and get high scores but you soon get bored with this or you could try and be different but but still keep it simple a compromise really.
12/05/2005 06:06:20 AM · #30
drachoo-
I would recommend that you find a nice hobby which would help get you some relief from the pressures of this site.
--JR
 12/05/2005 08:24:47 AM · #31
I have to agree with those who missed the log. It was not until I read the posts that I understood that it was a log and not some rocks. Technically, this is spot on, but without the log beign more obvious, it's just a neat little mushroom.
 12/05/2005 11:58:08 AM · #32
Originally posted by jrjr:
drachoo-
I would recommend that you find a nice hobby which would help get you some relief from the pressures of this site.
--JR


Wait, this was supposed to be my hobby. ;) Actually, after seeing post after post that the viewer "missed the log", I think the score is deserved. Perhaps it was a doomed idea from the start. Like I said earlier, I had a crop with more wood, but didn't like the composition. The mushroom (which is the focal point of the picture, if not the subject of the idea) just got lost too quickly the more I zoomed back.
 12/05/2005 12:02:16 PM · #33
ok on tech, you're right its an amazing composition. But even I don't understand the connection between it and the challenge, I think maybe you were shooting a little too much into the intellectual area (the title and the shot itself) We all take hits, I've taken hits on my last 3 challenges.. it sucks!
 12/05/2005 12:05:56 PM · #34
Ok, since everyone has been so kind in telling Doc what was wrong with his picture (which I gave a 10) maybe they could enlighten me as to what was wrong with my odd entry. It scored a 4.631. I too felt the frustration, was it that they didnt get what it was? Wouldnt that be Odd in itself? A little help would be appreciated.


12/05/2005 12:07:07 PM · #35
I understood the connection only after I read teh title, fungus feeding on adult forest growth. Not sure what the boggle was. Gave it a 6 if it made you feel better, but from the likes of me, maybe not :o)

Message edited by author 2005-12-05 12:07:27.
 12/05/2005 12:19:13 PM · #36
[quote=mesmeraj] rose - have you callibrated your monitor lately?
I ask because i do not understand your referance to contrast. The colours looks quite balanced to me (but ive not dragged it into PS or anything).

Well, you know, my own photos seem to look great in the monitor, but some comments I get are about contrast and noise and grain and even lighting, which I don't understand. I guess it must be that each person's monitor sees something different?

Rose


12/05/2005 12:29:59 PM · #37
Originally posted by Kivet:
Ok, since everyone has been so kind in telling Doc what was wrong with his picture (which I gave a 10) maybe they could enlighten me as to what was wrong with my odd entry. It scored a 4.631. I too felt the frustration, was it that they didnt get what it was? Wouldnt that be Odd in itself? A little help would be appreciated.



Left you a comment.
 12/05/2005 12:32:33 PM · #38
Thanks for the comment. My main question was is it the picture or the challenge??

Originally posted by cpanaioti:
Originally posted by Kivet:
Ok, since everyone has been so kind in telling Doc what was wrong with his picture (which I gave a 10) maybe they could enlighten me as to what was wrong with my odd entry. It scored a 4.631. I too felt the frustration, was it that they didnt get what it was? Wouldnt that be Odd in itself? A little help would be appreciated.



Left you a comment.

12/05/2005 12:40:16 PM · #39
Originally posted by Kivet:
Ok, since everyone has been so kind in telling Doc what was wrong with his picture (which I gave a 10) maybe they could enlighten me as to what was wrong with my odd entry. It scored a 4.631. I too felt the frustration, was it that they didnt get what it was? Wouldnt that be Odd in itself? A little help would be appreciated.



The image itself is entirely abstract, and abstraction does not score well in DPC as a rule. ON top of that, there's no obvious connection to the "odd" theme, except inasmuch as it's maybe a little bit odd as an image. and the voters rejected that approach across the boards; yours isn't the only one that suffered that fate.

R.
 12/05/2005 12:47:05 PM · #40
Originally posted by Rose8699:
[quote=mesmeraj] rose - have you callibrated your monitor lately?
I ask because i do not understand your referance to contrast. The colours looks quite balanced to me (but ive not dragged it into PS or anything).

Well, you know, my own photos seem to look great in the monitor, but some comments I get are about contrast and noise and grain and even lighting, which I don't understand. I guess it must be that each person's monitor sees something different?

Rose


You really need to callibrate then, because you are obviously having a problem that the rest of us do not share.
Search callibrate in the forums, there are lots of linkts and instructions on how to do so.
For a while i didnt callibrate my monitor, and a couple of enteries went down the shooter for it. Fixed my callibration and suddenly i understood the comments i had been geting on my enteries. Speaking of which, it has been a couple of months, i need to go do it again.
 12/05/2005 12:48:12 PM · #41
Originally posted by Rose8699:
Originally posted by mesmeraj:
rose - have you callibrated your monitor lately?
I ask because i do not understand your referance to contrast. The colours looks quite balanced to me (but ive not dragged it into PS or anything).


Well, you know, my own photos seem to look great in the monitor, but some comments I get are about contrast and noise and grain and even lighting, which I don't understand. I guess it must be that each person's monitor sees something different?

Rose


Rose,

Certainly there's a wide range of calibration (or lack of calibration) on members' monitors, plus the TYPE of monitor makes a difference. I run a calibrated, high-end graphic arts monior with a CRT and my neighbor has a high-end LCD monitor, and the differences between them are fairly remarkable. The LCD is much brighter/crisper/sharper looking at a normal viewing distance, but breaks down more easily when you get real close to it. What I see, in terms of sharpness/crispness, on my CRT much more closely matches my printer output than what the LCD screen shows. If I edit my images on my neighbor's screen so they look "right" to me, they come out a little soft and muddy on my printer. If I edit them on the CRT, which I do virtually every time, then when I view them on the LCD they look oversharpened and a little too contrasty to me.

So I have taken to preparing DPC entries a little softer and flatter than I like on my CRT, trying to split the difference and get soemthing that will be acceptable to both camps.

R.
 12/05/2005 12:54:14 PM · #42
Originally posted by bear_music:
Certainly there's a wide range of calibration (or lack of calibration) on members' monitors, plus the TYPE of monitor makes a difference.


with my new pc, i got a new digital lcd screen. i'm using both it and my old analog lcd at the house and a fairly nice crt here at work. all three look different. the difference is glaringly obvious at home where the two sit side by side. the new dell lcd is about 10 times as bright as the older samsung lcd which has a bluish tint in comparison...

of course, i've not calibrated the new lcd, which may explain my knife fork spoon score.

or it's just a crappy picture... i can never tell...
 12/05/2005 01:14:35 PM · #43
Hey Doc, You beat me:) I wish I would have entered a wonderful mushroom in an old forest like yours, my rod did terrible. Van

Message edited by author 2005-12-05 14:27:42.
 12/05/2005 01:48:37 PM · #44
OK Doc,

As one of your 3 scores, I'll explain my reasoning.

The first pass through I split all the photos into 3 categories: bad, good, and great. Then I go through and vote each category: bad will score 1-3, good gets 4-6, and great gets 7-9. Only at the end do I do a final pass and promote some 9s to 10s.

Any photo that has absolutley nothing to do with the challenge gets stuck in the "bad" group. Some people disagree with this, but I think that the challenges are very important. Without using the challenge discription as our guide, we all might as well go shoot a pretty sunset every week. We participate in guided challenges on a specific subject, and to me, a photo which completley ignores that guidance is a gets a "bad" vote.

That is, unfortunatley what happened to your shot.

Please don't assume that everyone who "didn't get it" is an unwashed idiot, or one of the bleating sheep... I could tell that you spent a lot of time on the photo, because it is, indeed, a goregous photo. I couldn't believe that someone would spend a significant amount of time shooting that scene without some link to the challenge in their mind. But I just couldn't find it, no matter how hard I tried.

You got the three you did, because it is a technically and artistically great shot. You should be happy with it as a photo. Enter it in the "fungus" challenge and I'll give you a 10. But based on my system it's no more than a 3.

Now after I hear your explanation, I wonder if it's even less relevant to the challenge... hear me out.

You stated that the focal point of the photo is the mushroom. You also stated that the dead tree is the symbolic adult, giving its "essence" so that the mushroom could live.

I think that the focal point of the picture should be the adulthood, or in your shot, the tree. By making the focal point the mushroom, you've driven me even further away from the point of the shot, which should have been the "adult" tree giving its life.

It's a profound philosophical statement, especially since I have an infant child that I've realized I would give my life for in an instant, but I just don't think the megaphone was turned on for this one.

Sorry. :(
 12/05/2005 02:12:08 PM · #45
Sorry if I'm repeating anyone 'coz I didn't go through all the replies. DrAchoo, I thought it was quite a nice shot and gave it a 6. But to be honest it was only after a good 2nd look and I still missed the log. Most people (I think) vote on meeting the challenge as the most important criteria whereas I tend to weigh or balance that a little more with how appealing the photo is. In your case, it was nice and did meet the challenge but only in a very complex sort of interpretation. In Marketing, if we want mass appeal, the motto is always to K.I.S.S. and no that doesn't mean Kiss Up to anyone but Keep It Strictly Simple. :)
 12/05/2005 03:00:15 PM · #46
Doc, I basically agree with some of the comments made. First, I gave you a 7 based solely on the pic. Usually I look at a photo and make an immediate determination on whether the photographer followed the challenge or not and then look at the quality. I have to admit I didn't quite get the fallen log thing either. But I though the pic was great.

Unfortunately, we are asked on this site (and other contest based sites, etc.) to judge art. It will always be frustrating because the beauty is int he eye of the beholder....sorry about the cliche!
12/05/2005 03:23:12 PM · #47
I haven't read any posts in this discussion so if I'm repeating anything please forgive.

I totally don't get your entry on many levels. One simple question I have is, what scarifice did the log make? Did it give itself intentionally so other plants could grow? Personification....or logification?

Also, just reading your title without even looking at the image made me shake my head and say....huh? The line doesn't flow.

The image itself isn't that interesting to look at and not even close to your best work. I still can't tell that it's a log even after you've told me so...now here on technical merit I wouldn't blame the DPC culture in this particular case.

Though, there is a DPC culture that leans towards certain post-processing styles(overuse of Neatimage, Grunge and heavier than usual saturation, for example)but like the rest of us....it was simply your turn. You missed this time around as we all do. Well, as most of us do.
 12/05/2005 03:30:20 PM · #48
For whatever it's worth Doc, I got it and scored it an 8. LOL But it took me a while and several trips back to view it before I finally made a strong enough connection to bump it up. :-)

EDIT: And no, I'm not sucking up - I liked the out of the box thinking and creativity. The challenge topic was very difficult and I figured that anything that wasn't pretty literal would get hammered.

Message edited by author 2005-12-05 15:35:23.
 12/05/2005 03:53:32 PM · #49
Thanks for more replies. I exactly know why my picture scored the way it did, which is what I need.

Livitup: I'm not disagreeing with you because you are the voter and you have the right to vote however you please. That being said, Scalvert's blue doesn't have the "adult" represented as the major subject of the picture. It certainly works in his picture... ;)

Pawdrix: Yes. I had hoped to find an actual tree sapling coming out of the log for a better analogy, but I couldn't find one. That being said, of course the tree didn't actually sacrifice itself so the moss and mushroom could grow. It's allegory instead of personification.

Once again, I am more than happy that people gave it a 3, but thought about it. Some even went back. My bigger beef was worrying that we aren't giving pictures a fair shake. My score was just a symptom of it, but I can see that plenty of people thought about it and still scored it low. I'm good with that.

Bring on the "fungus" challenge!!!
 12/05/2005 04:21:05 PM · #50
Allegory?...ALLEGORY?

We'll have none of that around here...thank you.
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