Photos of me! Critiques?

[NZcaver]

Salons are a lot of work. Kudos to you for organizing that, Kelly. One of the girls in the northeast did this years ago for a couple of NRO events. It was a good idea, and can be quite encouraging for budding cave photographers. But yeah, it's a lot of work!

[Mudduck]

As far as the TAG photo salon goes, it is more just for fun and in no means a serious competition. I wouldn't go bragging "Hey I won such and such place at the TAG Photo Salon"... There is not alot of entries for the judges to chose from and it's not based on technical merit. Last year it was People's Choice Award but because it took me nearly TWO hours to count up the votes (which took two hours away from my party time), this year I selected (begged) three cavers to do the judging for me. When it was time for the judges to show up, only two of them did and they only had a handful (less than 10) photos to chose from. The majority of the photos that were entered were disqualified because people did not read the rules which I thought were pretty darn simple and there were only TWO Categories for photos. It was a lot of work setting up the area for the salon and getting all the materials ready for not a lot of participation so it was kinda a defunk that one person got several ribbons anyways. I doubt I will be willing to volunteer to host it again.

Kelly
^V^

Judge success not by quantity or quality of entries. Any participation at all shows enough interest to warrant the effort. I for one enjoyed looking at the pictures in the booth last year. I did not go this year so do not know if there were more or less. It is defintately a lot of work but I can assure you there are those of us who appreciate it.

[Footleg]

The issue of touching a formation or not is a non issue in my opinion. While I do not exhibit such in my own images,

Ahem...

I thought we were talking about the ethics of touching a formation here? This photo appears to show someone touching two formations, which is in my view a much more balanced approach.

[Footleg]

.... only had a handful (less than 10) photos to chose from. The majority of the photos that were entered were disqualified because people did not read the rules which I thought were pretty darn simple and there were only TWO Categories for photos. It was a lot of work setting up the area for the salon and getting all the materials ready for not a lot of participation so it was kinda a defunk that one person got several ribbons anyways. I doubt I will be willing to volunteer to host it again.

Kelly
^V^

As an organizer of photo salons in the UK, I know how frustrating it can be. I was curious as to how your 2 categories might result in most entries being unsuitable so I googled the web page for the TAG salon and found out what they were. 1) Caves. 2) Cavers.

So now I am wondering what on earth got submitted that did not fit into one of those two categories?! They seem pretty all inclusive!

[Anonymous_Coward]

I guess I'm just a hater.

Glad to see you are finally coming to terms with this, Jansen. Acceptance is the first step.

[UnderGroundEarth]

.... only had a handful (less than 10) photos to chose from. The majority of the photos that were entered were disqualified because people did not read the rules which I thought were pretty darn simple and there were only TWO Categories for photos. It was a lot of work setting up the area for the salon and getting all the materials ready for not a lot of participation so it was kinda a defunk that one person got several ribbons anyways. I doubt I will be willing to volunteer to host it again.

Kelly
^V^

As an organizer of photo salons in the UK, I know how frustrating it can be. I was curious as to how your 2 categories might result in most entries being unsuitable so I googled the web page for the TAG salon and found out what they were. 1) Caves. 2) Cavers.

So now I am wondering what on earth got submitted that did not fit into one of those two categories?! They seem pretty all inclusive!

I thought the rules were simple. I tried my best to keep it as simple as possible. Photos of just caves w/ no critters & no cavers & then those with critters or cavers... We had photos submitted into the "caves" category that had cavers in the picture. Max per person was three and they had also submitted photos in the Cavers category so we couldn't just switch the category for them because they were already at their max... So they were disqualified from the juding in that category. Several photographers made this mistake.

[NZcaver]

I thought the rules were simple. I tried my best to keep it as simple as possible. Photos of just caves w/ no critters & no cavers & then those with critters or cavers... We had photos submitted into the "caves" category that had cavers in the picture. Max per person was three and they had also submitted photos in the Cavers category so we couldn't just switch the category for them because they were already at their max... So they were disqualified from the juding in that category. Several photographers made this mistake.

With the exception of macros, it can be tough to create a really good cave image with no cavers (or critters) - at least for scale and focal interest.

But what can you do? Allow cavers to feature in the "caves" category, so long as they are a relatively minor element of the image for scale etc? Use the "cavers" category when the focus of the image is on cavers or action or facial features? And perhaps introduce a third category where the focus in on "critters"? See if participants can figure it out!

[NZcaver]

I guess I'm just a hater.

Glad to see you are finally coming to terms with this, Jansen. Acceptance is the first step.

That was 2 weeks ago, Andy. I'm over it now. I've been out shooting things.

[Footleg]

I thought the rules were simple. I tried my best to keep it as simple as possible. Photos of just caves w/ no critters & no cavers & then those with critters or cavers... We had photos submitted into the "caves" category that had cavers in the picture. Max per person was three and they had also submitted photos in the Cavers category so we couldn't just switch the category for them because they were already at their max... So they were disqualified from the juding in that category. Several photographers made this mistake.

I can see why that caused confusion. It would not have occurred to me that the caves category could not feature any cavers. Virtually any big room shot will at least have one figure for scale. Otherwise it can be hard to tell it is a big room. I had interpreted these categories as 'images where the cave is the main subject' and 'images where a critter or person was the main subject'. It you exclude images with any people in them at all from the caves category then did you also exclude images from the 'cavers' category that featured any cave?

Don't be disheartened about organising these salons. I think these regional event competitions are very important for cavers to gain confidence and progress to entering the national salons which can feel very intimidating to less experienced photographers. I've learned over the years that the trick is to try and be as inclusive as possible when defining categories and rules, and to try and design the running of the salon so as to minimise the work for any one person. e.g. Getting some volunteers to help count votes, or getting judges involved so that you do not end up spending all you time running the salon and not enjoying the event itself.