First Photo Contest Win

Thumbnail: In A Flash Contest Results

Not the grand prize, but I won the por­trait cat­e­go­ry for my pic­tures of Chaos from Canada Day ’06, and Gerry from my Gerry Project.

Our judges had their hands full. With close to 100 entries, and pho­tos of every­thing from pen­guins to croc­o­diles to war vet­er­ans and oth­er UCC lumi­nar­ies, it was­n’t an easy deci­sion to com­pare these apples and oranges. Ultimately, the judges decid­ed that tech­nique and con­tent count­ed in equal mea­sure.

To cre­ate as fair a judg­ing process as pos­si­ble, names, grade, and grad­u­a­tion years were left off the pho­tos, and replaced by a num­ber. That way, cur­rent stu­dents and Old Boys all had an equal shot. (To ensure no judge was swayed by the opin­ion of anoth­er, each wrote down his or her favourite num­ber, with no pri­or dis­cus­sion.)

It was a blind judg­ing, and as a result, my two pho­tos tied with each oth­er for first place with­out the judges know­ing that they were both from one per­son. Not bad for the first pho­tog­ra­phy con­test I entered.

Seeing my pic­tures in print is great, but win­ning isn’t the impor­tant part.

The most sat­is­fac­tion comes from know­ing that I could step out of my com­fort zone to call a stranger and take pic­tures of him, which was the main goal of the Gerry Project.

Being rec­og­nized for the pic­tures was a nice lit­tle bonus.

10 comments

  1. You have to get me a copy!!! Chaos will want to know he’s a celebri­ty!

  2. Congrats on your win Jeff. That’s awe­some!

  3. Congratulations man! Those are amaz­ing pho­tos, and I’m glad to see you’re get­ting recog­ni­tion for them :)

  4. I’m so proud of you!

  5. Thanks, guys. Hopefully I’ll receive my extra copies of the arti­cle soon. They also promised a mod­est prize, so I’m guess­ing that they’ll come togeth­er.

  6. I’m glad to see that pic­ture of Gerry got out into the pub­lic. I real­ly liked it.

  7. Wah! Gung hei ne! But those are the least of your pics in my opin­ion.…

  8. @Reno — I’m real­ly hap­py about that too. Since Gerry is also an alum­nus of UCC, he gets a copy of the newslet­ter as well so he’s bound to see his pic­ture. It’s cur­rent­ly being enlarged to an 8x10 and framed, which I’m going to give him as a present.

    @Xibee — It’s fun­ny you should say that. None of what I would con­sid­er my bet­ter work fit into any of the cat­e­gories (nature, action, dig­i­tal­ly enhanced, por­trait, and cam­pus life, humor), so I did­n’t think I had a chance. It was quite an unex­pect­ed sur­prise.

    @Pearl and Darren — Thanks. :)

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