I think you're right. If I was shooting proper wedding pictures, I'd definitely try and do that.

(The professional 'tog didn't, by the way! :shock

Another wedding, and another excuse to take more pictures. I used a 50mm f1.7 M, mainly. There are issues with some of these compositions, as I never found myself quite able to get myself in the right place, at the right distance; and didn't want to hold everyone up as I faffed about with the exposure settings. The shot in front of the church was wayyyy overexposed - I was able to retrieve it in RAW but the dress is unfortunately a little burned out. It's also a shame the whole group wasn't included in the shot

I can see what drew you to the shot Andrew, but I think this needs a tighter, more graphic composition and perhaps better lighting to bring out the testures. Including the background vegetation does this shot no favours IMO, although you could have gone to the other extreme - a wide angle close up including a sweep of background context.

Raw every time! Much better for noise, and highlight recovery. And if the shot isn't worth processing, I bin it!

I do shoot Raw plus jpeg though, as the latter are handy for quick viewing.

I have a 135 3.5 M for sale - £40 plus postage cost. It's immaculate.

I'm always one for discretion in such circumstances. Let the rule remain, but allow the judge to use his discretion if someone makes a mistake and has to reupload a shot within a short time because they uploaded the wrong one etc. I'm sure this happens all the time without anyone really noticing.

It's a 'fun' competition after all. It needs rules but lets not get too serious about it.

Well said Gwyn. I agree that Stefan has only acted out of a wish to be fair, and has certainly put a lot of effort in. It does seem simpler just to let the competition run its course though - if people misinterpret, so be it.

There are no boring subjects, only boring photographs! There are a lot of very boring landscape photos in the gallery but I would never want to ban landscape photography. I find steam train photos very tedious as a rule, but occasionally one comes along that blows my socks off. One thing I agree on is that we all need to make our photos a bit more interesting and memorable, and filter out the real yawners - especially in the gallery section of this site.

The situation has no doubt caused poor Stefan a lot of additional grief! Good luck with the judging Stefan. Kudos for trying something a bit different even if it's backfired slightly!

I really like no. 3, with the ducks in the foreground. Superb place, really lush and the terracing of the rice paddies is extremely picturesque.