On: Competitions

The blog seems to be very very quiet these days and I reckoned as much; but if you are here now, then I reckon again as much that you need a break too. :)

For those of you who don't frequent Clubsnap, you prolly would not have noticed this:

http://www.thempa.com/masterphotographyawards09_finalists/

It's essentially the Master Photography Awards 09 Finalist album. It's an outstanding selection of 70 odd photos and even though it's a British competition, you can see some local pictures in there. Some local professional photographers managed to enter the finals; hence they plastered this on the Clubsnap front page.

But that's not the point, the point is that: It's a good album and you all should take at least a quick glance to get a sense of what makes a good photo.

The other point is that while I was looking through the photos, if anything, a number of the photos were heavily edited (burning, dodging and even framing), some even composite and it really got me to start thinking, if overseas professional competitions allows for such freedom in photographic expression in competitions, then why are local amateur competitions so uptight about post processing? Some don't allow you to edit and some allow, some don't allow you to crop and some restrict you to certain specific sizes, some allow for some form of contrast enhancement but the large grey area leaves much to be desired.

Over the years, I have joined or witnessed quite a number of photographic competitions and I've noticed that a lot of our local judges tend to favour under edited photos; some WB correction or very minor contrast enhancements at most. For some reason they seems to like the raw and unadulterated flavour in photos, opposed to those heavily edited ones, seen in the album I mentioned about. Like some people prefer their vegetables blanched in water rather than stir fried in chilli. Of course to one his own taste, but the problem - from what I gather is that they tend to think that heavily edited photos are fake, over processed and unnecessary. It's almost like saying its a sin to fry kang kong with blachan because it kills the delicate flavour of the kang kong even though it might taste delicious. It may be extremely delicious but it's pointless hence it's a failure because it relies on heavy seasoning. Clearly to just brush it off as bad, is just wrong.

Is it fair to say girls who put on heavy makeup have poor fashion sense or out of their mind? If she's pretty, she's pretty, if she's ugly, she's ugly. What does having heavy, light or no makeup got to do with it?

Then again, those of you who have seen my photos would know that I like to process my photos heavily so you may think I might be biased, but I'll let you decide on what you think is best.

But personally at the end of the day, your preference in post processing really boils down to how you view photography, whether you think it's a journalistic extension of writing or a more technical form of art, hence the way you preserve the "truth" would be very different. The important thing is that you do it your way, not what others think is the right way. To me, photography is an art form and as an artist; my expression is absolute. Everyone else comes after me.