Congrats to the winner but with all due respect to the judges I don’t get it, I’ve been entering SNCs for a while now and the winner was always well deserved but this time I totally disagree, everyone who got an honorable mention posted better photos.
(Just a personal opinion)
Congrats again and good luck for everyone next time.
Hey Khaleel,
Appreciate the opinion and of course not everyone will agree, but this is what the criteria specifically stated in the original contest post. We don't normally divulge into the judging process and how we choose the winner but I feel it is necessary here.
"In addition to getting that shot, judging criteria will be based on the artistic style of your photo. This means composition, lighting, color, and setting. Incorporate all of these together to bring your style through your cardistry and show the world your perspective. Whoever does the best job of utilizing these elements in their photo will win."
First point I want to highlight is the
artistic style of your photo. Stratego approached his photo with a different perspective, which also highlights the
show the world your perspective part of the criteria. Using shadows is very difficult to get right, especially for cardistry because it is hard to translate movement of a move in action with a single picture of a shadow. It's tough to get this right with a photo of the cards directly, so we felt that this was definitely deserving of bonus points.
Next point is the composition. The entire frame of the photo was used and the hand placement and direction of the spring made sense. It created a flow of direction in which your eyes start at the top right and end at the bottom left. Having a clear flow pattern in an image is also hard to get right, and we felt that in combination with the unique perspective, the composition made it that much more of a memorable photo.
Lighting was also a plus here as with shadows sometimes you get a double image, or you don't get a distinct shadow outline. This photo has a clear shadow you can understand, which in our opinion factored into making the photo strong.
For color, this could have been a solid black and white image like most shadow or extreme contrast images are. Instead, we liked the cream/beige background and the dark brown shadow. It added a more dynamic element to the photo and gave it that extra flair. We felt this was a strong artistic choice.
For setting, we know that shadow photos are most powerful when the setting is simple and not distracting to the main subject, so a simple contrast between two colors here against a wall is perfectly simple and doesn't need anything else added to it.
Another touch that we liked in this photo was that the actual cards in the middle of the spring are not solid shadow lines. Instead, they are the only shadows that show motion blur, which we feel added onto the element of composition and flow. Your eyes start at the top right corner, then as it follows down to the bottom left it shows motion which is what you would naturally see when viewing a card spring in person.
We felt this image brought every part of the criteria together in a beautiful and easy to understand way, and for us made it the most memorable.
Like we said in the results post, the honorable mention photos made this extremely close! This was an extremely close contest, and the strong evidence for this is that you said yourself you liked those photos more. Not everyone will agree on what photo was the best, as art and photography are viewed much differently from person to person. This is why these contests are always hard to judge, but we always try our best to pick the one photo that we feel combined all the listed criteria together. We hope you agree with our picks, but we know that not everyone will. We wouldn't pick a winner that we felt wasn't deserving of the prize.