Discussion: Weekly competition No. 26

I am very glad to see that Joshua Hakin, who pops up now and again to post some excellent pictures, has contributed to the latest competition.

However, I am a little concerned that what he has posted is not "a picture" but a gallery of three.

Joshua would perhaps argue that it is in the nature of a triptych, and should be viewed as though it were a single image. Well, perhaps, but next week we might get a pentptych with five images, or a polyptych with quite a number.

Any thoughts?

G

I too have reservations about a tryptych (or a number of images), otherwise I could point you at my gallery!

I think the nature of these friendly competitions is one image to be judged on it's own merit.

As long as it isn't three times as large as a typical post.....as in 2400x2400 pixels..... there is a trade off that levels the playing feild, one larger image with more detial vs three smaller images with less detial........
there's three different images in this one:

Hmm, tricky isn't it when the boundaries are stretched, but it's always been seen as valid when triptychs are entered in camera club competitions.

In fact, previously I have entered multiple-image pictures where there have been as many as nine separate images.

It left the judge totally unimpressed, so I don't think we can assume that it was an advantage!

Like everything else, I'm sure this entry will just be judged on its merits.

My inclination, reading this, was to agree with you. How could it be fair to submit three pictures to others' one, thereby achieving (all things being equal) three times the impact?

Then I looked at the triptych in question, and found the individual pictures too small to really appreciate.

I ended up feeling that any benefit of having several pictures is cancelled by the fact that to see them on a screen, they have to be that much smaller.

So I think the rule, such as it might be, could be a maximum size (say 1000 pixels on any edge), rather than a maximum mumber of images.

All that said, I do incline towards a genuinely level playing field - one frame. Although having been a lot more impressed than I was expecting, when I saw the "Turner Prize Retrospective" at the Tate the other day, maybe more, not less, liberalism is a good idea.

I think it's fine. As has been said, there is a trade off between having three pics submitted and the size of individual pictures. Also I don't feel that chances are increased threefold as one picture below par can ruin the whole submission. So there are three chances to mess up as well.

As for the submission in question, without this thread I would have thought nothing about it as it shows a single building in all three parts of the triptych.

On a different note: Difficult theme this week. Not because it's difficult to find buildings to shoot or shots from the archives, it's the selection that makes it so difficult. I have at least a hundred shots that could qualify from my trip to Hong Kong in November. And then there are all the other building shots I like... Sigh... And a great start to this competition already...

I think in this case its fine - its three pictures of one building. If he had however, put three pictures of three interesting buildings - then its just as if he's searching for votes.

When I was looking through my shots while considering what to submit I thought I'd end up using one from Hong Kong, only to realise I took surprisingly few building shots in the 2 years I lived there. The options were further limited as quite a few of the candidates weren't shot on Pentax equipment as I also Contax G and medium format set-ups at the time.

If I went back there now I'd be looking for interesting angles for building shots with the Sigma 10-20 and Pentax 10-17.

I think three different views of one building is not materially different from one view of each of three different buildings.

However, I wasn't advocating that this triptych be disallowed; I was more concerned that we don't create a precedent where, for instance, next week somebody posts three or four different pictures of one subject, and claims that there is no difference between that and what Joshua has done.

For clarity, I would say that Josh should perhaps be allowed this one, but in future a "photo" is defined as a single picture, and that it should originate from a camera. That definition can embrace photographic montages, which are a single image from multiple original photographs.

G

The thing is, a montage where the originals don't overlap, and where there is no separating frame between them, is no different from a triptych with no frame. As soon as montages of any kind are permitted, it becomes almost impossible to have a simple rule.

I still think (and my apologies to Don for not noticing that his earlier suggestion was materially the same as mine) that since impact from size, and impact from number, are mutually limiting, we'd be better off with a maximum size for the entry.

And/or of course, any additional rules that the previous week's winner cares to specify.

Just to remind everyone that the rules, such as they are, do specify one image per person for each competition. On the one occasion that someone inadvertently posted a selection of images they chose the one they wanted to keep and withdrew the rest.

Don't worry, it won't develop into a competition of panels of images!

What a stunning building John Ryland's Library is, must put it on my list of places to visit!

Perhaps it's lucky I did'nt enter this:




Lloyds Rifle Club ..........

Took me about 5minutes to work out why there were round leaves floating infront of dans building

Confused me for a bit too.

Dan