NS Photog contest(s). A way to improve your photography

TijmenDal

TijmenDal

Active member
Hi fellow photogs,

This is an idea I've been playing around in my head with for a while.

There's a great amount of talent on this site in many different subjects. One of them is photography. The 'Your best photography' threads is one of my favorites and I religiously check it out.

The amount of feedback threads and people looking for critiques and advise to help them improve their photography is great and from that it can only deduced that people are willing to get better at what they do.

One of the best ways to get better at photography - apart from shooting as much as you can - is showing off your work and getting feedback. I think it is about time we up the ante a little.

That's why I was thinking of organizing the NS photography contest; an event in which a certain number of photographers enter and showcase a single photo for an assignment.

I'm sure there's going to be enough animo for this, but we'll have to figure out together what we want the format to be. So please, feel free to suggest what you think would work.

I was thinking *something* along these lines:

- Up to 16 photogs max.

- Every contestant puts in 20-30$ (we'll have to decide on this) and let someone hold the money until everything's finished - maybe Bishop or someone else everybody trusts.

- The contest is not only about how good you are, it's also how about you improve: that's what this is all about. Not only does this help everyone who enters out, it also gives less-experienced photogs a shot at the prize money!

This is the reason everyone that enters should get familiar with all the other photogs work.

- Every week/10 days/two weeks there is an assignment - *NOT* a field of photography for which you put up an entry. I say this because not everyone has the chance to photograph an action shot or a landscape shot in equally beautiful or good places: where you live or what you do shouldn't form a limitation. Again, it's about having equal chances. That's why we should have themes people can interpret freely and be creative with

- I was thinking 6-8 different themes.

Prizes:

Let's say 16 people enter, everybody puts in 30$. That's 480$ right there. Quite a lot of money! I suggest we split it up in a couple prizes, three to be precise

Every theme will get voted on by the contestants. There would be two rules: you can't vote for yourself and you have to write a couple sentences why you chose your winners. Actively analyzing your picks is, I think, very important to getting a greater understanding and towards improving.

In the end it there will be three winners:

- One for the one that got the lowest number in the end. This number will consist of all the places you ranked for the different themes added up. This person will take like 200$ (?)

- The person that improved most overall. This is purely a comparison of the persons work before the contestant, his first entry or two and his (or her) last entries. It will - I hope - not be too hard to see improvement in a persons work, this person will take 200$

- There will be a voting in the end for the best 'overall' picture from *all* themes. The one with the most votes wins: remaining 80$.

Three different winners (no double winners).

In the end 13 people will end up losing 30$ (not too bad) and three others will get a nice chunk of prize money (always cool). Everybody learned a lot and that's what's most important I think.

Now, this is what *I* had in mind. Other people might approach this totally differently than I would and I'd love to hear about what you think about it and if you think something like this is a good idea.

Post up!
 
Oops, meat to direct it to the 'Fun with MF images' thread haha. Holy grail of professional photography. Hassy H4D's and P1/P45+ combos are a common setup for these guys :o
 
Triple post smd but back on topic!

I'd be down for the photo contest. I'm not sure how you're going to limit the number to 16, but I believe that is the perfect number. Maybe only certified photographers (if there is a title for that or something, or maybe an admin can make one) can enter, just to weed out the less experienced or whatever. Just my .02!

Let's get this going!
 
What about two, the one you described and a free armature one because their are probly a lot of people just getting in to photography who would want to do something like this and would benefit from it.
 
Great idea Tijmen! Would love to take part in this. Only advice would be to make the entry fee $20 or maybe even $10 for the first go around. $30 just seems a bit too much to give away at the moment :/
 
Ok, we'll make it lower then. It also depends on how many people enter.

The idea of having two different ones, an amateur and 'pro' one, sounds pretty good too.

I think it's actually a better idea to have a lower entrance fee the first time, because we're inevitably going to run into some problems and flaws.

Everybody seems to be positive about it, which is a good thing!
 
I would totally be down for this. Like other people have said though, I think the buy in should be a little less, maybe increase it by round. I'll keep an eye on this here thread.
 
saying round made me think, maybe there could be some type of head-to-head bracket style challenge after a few normal contests have passed. Every week there is a challenge and you are competing against another member to complete the challenge better.

Every participant would vote in each matchup and provide reasoning for why they voted as they did (adding even more constructive feedback).

A prize could be given for the top 3 or 4 contestants and the person who gave the best critiques (maybe?) could also receive some prize in order to keep people interested in the later rounds and accrue votes in the later rounds.

Maybe this is too competitive or too hard to put together, just popped into my head and thought I would share it.

Great Idea Tijmen! I think a $10 buy-in would be a good price as many members are in school, are young or otherwise can't quite afford that much. Possibly there could be 2 different contests, one for more experienced photographers with a higher entry fee and one for beginners with a lower entry fee.

Maybe Bishop can even throw in some NS cash :D, like a few producers get, in order to encourage the media members of this site and it could possibly increase site views (maybe doubtful).
 
Good ideas for sure! I was also thinking about contacting Bishop and get him to throw in some NS goodies.

The head-to-head format is very cool of course, but that's something for later I think. Organizing this whole thing is going to be quite hard.

The easiest way will be through an excel sheet in Google Docs I think. That way they can do the math for us, which will be much easier.

I've also thinking about doing it anominously (where everybody is a 4 digit number instead of a name) so nobody is going to hold any grudges, but I don't think that's the way to go. Every person that enters should be able to handle losing, critiques, have fun with and be fair about everything.

 
This sounds pretty sweet. Just curious what a sample assignment would be. Nothing is flowing for me as to what it would be
 
It would be a theme that can be widely interpreted I think. I'm not saying the theme should be 'red', because that's boring as fuck, but it would be something we can all decide on. As said in the OP, the place you live shouldn't limit you in your assignment. So 'skiing' wouldn't work for everyone. Landscape is everywhere, so that could.

What I think would be a good one people can get creative with is for example intimacy, motion and OCD. These are just things that popped in my head just now. There's gotta be a thousand more
 
I think this is too easy. In order to push peoples photographic boundaries you would probably need an unbiased individual to decide on the challenge.

I also agree that $30 is far too much. The first contest should be $5-10
 
If you wanted to split it up into "pro" and "non-pro" you could have the "non-pro" contests be free and their prize is free entry into one of the "pro" contests. Just a thought, I feel like this could attract a lot of people
 
Ok. We'll settle on 10$ then. That's reasonable.

Keep in mind it takes quite some time to organize each round and what not.

I like your idea phawks, but I don't really feel like running two contests side by side. That'll take a lot of time.
 
run pro then when it finishs start the non-pro then pro and so on, this would give people a break in between if they entered the consecutively and only one would be running at a time.
 
make it $5 and i'm in. It should be an experiment to see what contest turnout is like with a prize at the end vs a lottery among the users of this site
 
I don't entirely understand why money is even relevant.

Also how do you convince someone who's settled into a shooting style and has little room for "improvement" (however you're going to quantify that) into putting his or her money on the table when they could very well lose not because of the image they submitted but because it was too consistent with previous work they've created?

 
It's not about being creative, it's about improving. If you've shot a certain genre a couple times people can look at that and compare it to what you've shot before.

The general consensus is that 20$ is too much, but I really think 5$ is not enough (to make people work a little harder). Everybody in here has camera's and lenses that are a couple hundred or thousand dollars, so I think it's safe to say pretty much anyone can spare 10$.

It isn't relevant or necessay, but it adds a different aspect.
 
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