Fifth photography competition.

After much wracking of brains, I finally managed to dredge up an idea for the next Photo Comp. It’s a fairly simple idea, and I think it might be interesting to see where the Charioteers take it. We see patterns all around us, all the time, but sometimes we don’t ‘see’ them, (apart from the more artistic of us, who post images that the rest of us look at and think, ‘Why didn’t I see that..’)

So the theme for the next competition is simply that: ‘Patterns.’ No queensbury rules for this one, it’s rough and tumble, anything goes – in other words, images may be manipulated in any way wished to produce the effect desired by the entrant.

Following the example set by Coldwater John, I have pulled a few shots out of my albums. None of them would impress me enough to win this month’s competition, but they all have patterns in them that might be pulled, pushed, stretched, squashed or otherwise knocked into shape as a competition entry. (Except the fuel bowser, which I came across while I was looking and stuck in as a bit of nostalgia – it’s Cyprus as it was before the invasion and all the development that followed – 1969, in fact.) (Some of the shots are quite old and needed repair when they were scanned.)

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Deadline for entries is 23.59 hrs GMT on 11th March – that’s three weeks + a little bit because I’m going to be away – in London as it happens – that week.

53 thoughts on “Fifth photography competition.”

  3. As you didn’t specify they needed to be taken during the course of the competition, I typed Patterns into my own photos’ database, and hey presto! I have put a few more Patterns’ images up in a slideshow on my own blog. I hope you have lots of entries as its certainly not weather-dependent ssurely all of us can see them all around us…we are promised the Northern Lights from here this evening and tomorrow, so I will be out in an Arctic Parka with my camera just in case they start flickering across the sky.

  5. Marvellous first entry, coldwaterjohn! Very impressive.

    Hmmm, I shall have to keep my eyes peeled for this one..

  9. Thank you Bearsy or Boadicea for fixing my technical mistakes. I had intended to remove the temporary blog earlier but I was already running behind schedule and needed to take care of some other things first.

  11. Janh I am no botanist, but the juxtaposed patterns caught my eye, as these things do 🙂
    Thgere is also an absolutely fabulous collection of wildly coloured orchids indoors in the Kibble Palace, which provides rich material for any photographer on the lookout for subject matter.

  16. Glasswing butterflies are very attractive and not native to the UK, and Wisley’s collection in the Glass House must be well worth a visit – beautiful shot.

    OZ The blasted moon is obscuring my hopes of catching the Northern Lights…but this is what they might look like, over the pond, if they were visible!

  18. Pseu, sadly there has been no sign of the Northern Lights over the past couple of nights, depsite assurances we may be able to see them from up here, so I just had to invent them!

  21. It is an image of the pond area of my garden after sunset. Using Photoshop 4, on top of the sky I have layered a reverse image of the Aurora Borealis,and faded it to about 80% on the slider. Then I erased whatever portion of that layer which was under the horizon on the original. This is what it could well resemble in real life if there was a good manifestation of it.I did this for one of the kids who had e-mailed me to keep a lookout for it, to send it back to them and ask if this is what they were talking about 🙂

  23. It costs an inordinate amount unless, like me, you can prevail upon a University student child to buy the student discount version – you then need three or four massive tomes of instructions to understand what to do with it! I have been working with parts of it for over a year now, and probably understand about 30% of its functionality – some of it is absolutely mind-bogglingly complex : Vector graphics, shape layers and adding vector masks to smart objects. The next chapter looks even more frightening, so I feel an urge for revision coming on: Have fun if you do decide to take it on!
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/cwaterjohn/4278703294/

  24. My son tells me there are free simpler versions to have a look at. Maybe I’ll have a look at those first?!

  25. Excellent image Rick, super dooper.

    CWJ, photoshop is good for correcting errors, and having a bit of fun, but it many ways, it’s trickery to the viewer, just a bit 🙂
    With that in mind, are photoshopped images accepted for the photography competition here? if so, does the entrant have to mention it when submitting an image to the competition?

    I ask because when we have competitions at our club, we are not allowed to photoshop them, the images must be natural, and our own work, not the software.
    Just a thought.

  26. Val, see the rules for this competition:
    “So the theme for the next competition is simply that: ‘Patterns.’ No queensbury rules for this one, it’s rough and tumble, anything goes – in other words, images may be manipulated in any way wished to produce the effect desired by the entrant.” So photoshop OK in this months comp, but up to the next ‘setter’ whether allowed or not next time.

  28. Incidentally, the Auroroa Borealis image is nothing to do with the Patterns competition.
    My only entry is the Glasgow Botanical Gardens image. Where are all the other entrants, or are you waiting to rush the judge in a last minute stampede? 🙂
    Val, the argument on creative use of PS continues to rage. What many of those arguing don’t seem to realize is that pre-digital, there were almost as many ways of manipulating images in the processing phase of the negatives, but because they were carried out in darkrooms, only the technician photographers knew that they were pushing the film speed by altering developing times, for instance, or altering focus at the print stage,or airbrushing portraits of elderly actresses to cause their wrinkles to fade away miraculously.
    Even with today’s digital camera, by choosing “landscape” setting for example, the camera increases colour saturation by one marker, or by choosing “portrait” it will soften the “definition” setting – so what the processing purists may object to, is in fact already taking place within the digital camera, without the average amateur photographer even being aware of it.
    I agree with you that for the purposes of “proper” competitions, it is frequently required that it has to be declared if a photograph has been “manipulated”, but I would argue that all photos taken on any of the automatic settings on a reasonably expensive digital camera, are already subject to manipulation within the processing which takes place as you press the shutter. In the old days, colour and saturation were manipulated by the choice of film you used. Some are specifically used for portraiture, others for their saturation levels in landscape work, whilst very low speed B&W film was used for archival and high definition purposes. It is to my mind at least, arguing how many angels can fit on the head of a pin, to suggest that one action is manipulation whilst another is “natural” photography.
    Photography after all, is just painting with light, and the initial image is just the musical score, and what you do with it is the performance! How profound is that? 🙂

  29. Good points CWJ
    I just popped over to check the closing date… I need to submit something, but haven’t yet taken the shot 🙂
    Fingers crossed for some more sunshine. I need shadows.

  33. The picture above… I hope I’ve got the sizing right… it looks larger than usual!

    This is an old sunflower head, slightly enhanced in the ‘bleaching effect’ -the origial photo was taken against the sun and I have just exaggerated this a little when editing

  34. Pseu – Nice one! You need shadows? Try Moonshadows (I’m being followed by a moonshadow) …whatever happened to Cat Stevens? I think he took religion, poor fellow.

  36. Moonlovers:
    “Wait for me by moonlight,
    Watch for me by moonlight,
    I’ll come to thee by moonlight,
    though hell should bar the way.”
    -Alfred Noyes

  37. Cat Stephens, born as Steven Demetre Georgiou, became Yusuf Islam when he went troppo and became a Muslim, openly supporting the fatwah against Salman Rushdie. Denied entry to the USA at one time, and a vociferous supporter of Hamas, this derelict later attempted to smarm his way back into the music scene, but he had lost the majority of his followers. He is not a nice person.

  40. Mine was cropped and very manipulated!

    Very much leading one up the garden path, but it was otherwise a very ordinary photograph.

  42. Just to let everyone know that I am keeping an eye on the entries, even though I’m living on aeroplanes at the moment 🙂

  45. Araminta -Great shot – love it – wish I’d done it!
    LW – Will I send you an application form to join “I’m A Photographer, Not a Terrorist”?
    Taking photos inside airports will earn you honorary membership!

  50. No, sadly it isn’t Nym. It is rather pleasing though.

    It’s the garden of a house near the river, which I pass by when I’m walking. I just happened to have my camera that day!

  51. LW, Photographers here, in the UK, have been having a spot of bother taking photographs in public, suffering harrassment from over-officious security guards, and some police forces, who have misinterpreted their powers under anti-terrorist legislation, Section 44 of the Terrorism Act.. Indeed there was a similar problem in the States to some extent, but London was particularly bad. As a backlash, photographers staged demonstrations to preserve their right to photograph anywhere in public places, without having to explain themselves to uniformed jobsworths. Eventually the Home Secretary passed repealing legislation which is supposed to have curtailed the powers of the police to stop and question photographers under the anti-terrorism legislation. If you google “I’m a Photographer, not a terrorist” you should find details. At one stage just the sight of a semi-professional-looking camera and a tripod would have security guards on buildings calling out police armed response teams – it was total overkill, apart from plain dumb, in an era when virtually every mobile phone can take acceptable surveillance photographs for a terrorist organization.

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