[water]

This got a bad reception in a club comp a few years ago.The judge said the 'author' needs to learn about focus point and depth of field to get everything sharp, but
when I came across this bone I 'saw' the front as resembling an animals face [a fox?] and deliberately used a large aperture and focused on the 'eyes' to throw the rest out of focus.Does it 'work' for anyone?

[fionaB]

yep as soon as the iamge opend thats the impression i got. an animal "looking" straight at me so yeah it works for me! cracking shot and i personally think its a great use of selective focussing ( mind you what do i know compared to a "judge" lol )

Fi

[dogdots]

Works for me. I think you did a good job of it. I like how it sits alittle to the right in the photo. I see the face as an elephants face with the bones on the sides being ears.

[Whipspeed]

I like the use of focus and can also see an elephant, but having joined a club, I am somewhat dissolusioned with the judging. Last one seemed to think everything needed cropping, and kept putting bits of card round shots, which to my eyes, made them look unbalanced.

[bob]

looks good to me,
judges, what do they know

[water]

Originally Posted by bob

looks good to me,
judges, what do they know

.He never even asked if this 'version' was deliberate,just assumed I got it wrong and should learn 'the rules'.Fine if he had ascertained it was deliberate and still wasn't impressed,that's his opinion and thats fine by me.It got to the stage where some of the 'old hands' could talk about 'tailoring' their entries to suit particular judges!!.Seriously.I was thinking of going back to my local club this year but I don't have the competitive urge and there is not the same facility/time given to the friendly stuff like is done on sites like Pixalo to just show your stuff and see others' offerings.Shame really.I will,I think, join next year to see if things have/are changed as the people are a very friendly and helpful bunch

[Rob Barron]

With judges like that, I'd leave that camera club or at least make sure the idiot is never invited back! Sadly some judges (and yes, I am a judge too!) look for something to make a comment about and jump to silly conclusions which if they took a step back and looked at the picture as a whole would at least attempt to get the photographer's view on what they are seeing.

It is an absolute nonsense to say the diff focusing is wrong here, indeed the picture would be dull with sharp focus throughout. You have done a good job of accentuating the face like osteograph we are seeing here and making an image out of something that was very ordinary. It's a bit noisy in the BG but as you said this is a few years old it could well have been taken at low resolution and with a less than great lens or whatever so I am ignoring that.

The picture as a whole works very well indeed so, assuming your club does the usual marks out of ten inc. half marks, I'll go 8. Had the column of vertebra been at an angle rather than very straight, it would have gone up to 8.5 :o)

So next time you see him, tell him from us he should jack the job in and go back to rudimentary learning

Cheers,
Rob

[water]

Originally Posted by Rob Barron

With judges like that, I'd leave that camera club or at least make sure the idiot is never invited back! Sadly some judges (and yes, I am a judge too!) look for something to make a comment about and jump to silly conclusions which if they took a step back and looked at the picture as a whole would at least attempt to get the photographer's view on what they are seeing.

It is an absolute nonsense to say the diff focusing is wrong here, indeed the picture would be dull with sharp focus throughout. You have done a good job of accentuating the face like osteograph we are seeing here and making an image out of something that was very ordinary. It's a bit noisy in the BG but as you said this is a few years old it could well have been taken at low resolution and with a less than great lens or whatever so I am ignoring that.

The picture as a whole works very well indeed so, assuming your club does the usual marks out of ten inc. half marks, I'll go 8. Had the column of vertebra been at an angle rather than very straight, it would have gone up to 8.5 :o)

So next time you see him, tell him from us he should jack the job in and go back to rudimentary learning

Cheers,
Rob

Thanks for your comments Rob.Agree re the angle and 'noise' [It is a scan from an Ilford Delta100 neg,a fine grained film as I'm sure you know, so the original 'wet room' print,untoned,was pretty much grain free at A4].
I entered it in an internal club comp and the judge was an 'outsider',though he also did inter-club comps.The Club and members were/are a good bunch and I was made most welcome and though most of us were older than 40 I got my introduction to computers and Photoshop there.In fact I bought my first computer because of this and the 'guys' sorted out the frequent problems I had with the computer as well as photography/photoshop.It was just the emphasis on comps that I got a bit fed up with [but thats my problem] and I do sometimes miss Thursday club nights [work permitting]