I placed first in Nature in Advanced Class in my camera club's competition

Gary, your advice about land lubber judges liking birds for their color, and advising me to pick colorful marine life, was so astute! The judge gave my ribbon eel a 9 (highest score) and commented specifically about the color. She loved the clown and knew how difficult they are to shoot. I don't how she knew that, but I she did. And she also marveled at the color and camouflaged environment of the shrimp. I got 8's on those. I got a 7 on my one land shot, a monkey taken at Monkey Forest. Thanks again to all of your for your comments. I couldn't have done it without you. I beat second place by 2 points, and he was 1 point ahead of me going into this last Nature competition.

Congratulations; you're on your way to fame.

Gary, your advice about land lubber judges liking birds for their color, and advising me to pick colorful marine life, was so astute! The judge gave my ribbon eel a 9 (highest score) and commented specifically about the color. She loved the clown and knew how difficult they are to shoot. I don't how she knew that, but I she did. And she also marveled at the color and camouflaged environment of the shrimp. I got 8's on those. I got a 7 on my one land shot, a monkey taken at Monkey Forest. Thanks again to all of your for your comments. I couldn't have done it without you. I beat second place by 2 points, and he was 1 point ahead of me going into this last Nature competition.

Cool, congrats, I liked those shots and glad to see the judges finally got the underwater idea

That's terrific! Congratulations!

Whoo hoooo! Way to go Ellen!

Cheers!

Steve

Congrats, Ellen! Beautiful shots and well done!

Congrats Ellen!!

Way to go!

There's a restrained quality that I find in your images: the colours are less saturated than some (eminent!) photographers like, and that some people find offputting (even though some creatures really are that garish!). I wonder if that helped in competition with non-underwater images?

Tim

I don't really know Tim. Some judges are just idiots. But this particular judge is an accomplished nature photographer and was familiar with animal behavior. Her main concern was technical accuracy. Like if someone had a hot spot in the background, even if the background was blurred out, she would definitely deduct for that. Her criticism of my anemone fish was that the middle of the fish was too dark. Then she would judge on composition. She hated if any part of a critter was cut off.

We also had a pictorial competition that night (any subject, any kind of manipulation) and I only got 2 HMs out of 4 entries. She was very tough with composition, lighting, etc. It's good in some ways because it makes you more aware of your images. But in some cases, I think she was wrong. She didn't like narrow DOF photos and would score them low and her criticism was that the whole thing wasn't in focus. Well, I know the makers and that's the way they wanted them. If I were judging, I would have given some of those higher scores than she did. After technical specs are met, it boils down to personal tastes.

I got burned once in a competition for over saturating an image and I've seen others knocked down for that too, so I'm very careful about that now and just bump the saturation up a little.

One funny story, she called someone on having halos around fixed spots in an image. Well, in this image below, I recolored the blown out sky. It was white in the original. I was so nervous that she would notice but she never even mentioned any obvious photoshopping. Sometimes I blow my image up and fix them pixel by pixel. I guess this time it paid off. I also burned in some of the flower because one of the petals was a little blown out. Too bad I didn't get paid by the hour doing it. LOL Her criticism of this one was that the bottom was too dark. And she's right.

congrats ellen! wish we had a camera club! see you soon. Scott

A big congrats to you Ellen! I hadn't seen that ribbon eel shot. Not only is the color great, but the detail is great too. Now that's a judge with good judgement!

See ya soon. Robyn

Hi Ellen,

Big congrats! I'm currently on the road responding via my phone

Thanks Gary. You were a big help and a tremendous inspiration!!

Congratulations! It's about time the judges started rewarding you with top scores for your underwater images!

I think this is worthy of a celebration

Ellen