Garuda Photo Contest
I was recently invited to judge the Garuda Indonesia Photo Contest. It was an honor I was pleased to accept because the photography was awesome and the other judges on the panel were photographers I admire and respect. I spent a long but pleasurable day going through a pre-selection of 3000 photos, three categories of 1000; Nature, Culture and People. The contest is now in the final judging stage and winners should soon be announced.
There were more than 60,000 photos submitted from 18,000 participant from 94 countries.
I wish I knew about this
I often wondered how judges judge, as very rarely do I think that winning photos in most competitions are particularly good. For example, the Apple iPhone competition last year was won from many hundred of thousand of entrants by a banal snapshot of a horse (even had electric wires in the background – was just point and shoot – no skill), and out of the top 20 photos I only reckon 5 or so to be particularly meritorious. Likewise I entered an ethnographic photo contest at my university which specializes in overseas fieldwork to amazing places, and there were categories for different regions + one for the college itself. The winning photo was a snapshot of a not bad looking student standing on the stairway of the college. Can’t explain either result ..
http://www.ippawards.com/?project=2013-winners
and
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=417538865002384&set=a.417538448335759.96665.415995101823427&type=3&theater
I completely agree, Fabian. For this contest I was on a panel of judges that voted on the top 1000. Our votes moved some photos into the top 200 from which the Indonesian judges have chosen the top 5. I was really surprised with the top five, some stunning photos that most of the first panel seemed to agree on were passed up.
Photo editors do the same with my photos for magazine layouts. I always send some photos that I think are horrible and they always choose those ones!
Damn you! Way to go. Thats really exciting news! It must be fun to be involved in something like this.
Thanks, Norman!