My college is having a photography contest with the top 25 receiving a free one day seminar with a celebrated professional and the grand prize contains software equipment - lots of stuff...good stuff. The challenge is how to select 5 images. Do you stick with a theme - ie all flowers all landscapes or do you mix it up? Also posting the images here for comment...a risk or are the comments worth the risk of other contestant candidates seeing my work? Sounds paraniod...yeah whatever I am hoping to get some opinions and ideas.
First, I'd post them here.
How will the photos be judged? Are there categories? Pro judges or observers voting?
Are the selecting winners by best single photo? Best group of photos? Themes?
Anything else you know about criteria for an image and winner selection?
If they are selecting winners defined by the top single 25 photos, I'd definitely avoid a theme. You risk having your images compete with themselves. Rather, post a few in the same theme here to select the best of the bunch.
Choosing the images for a top 25 sounds like they are looking for top visual composition, if they didn't give you any guidelines to work with. Picking your top 5 compositions, regardless of subject, should be enough. If you could find out more about the process they'll use, like sbeme suggested, you might be able to narrow down your challenge of selecting from your own works even better.
I wanted to mention that picking your photos is important, but presentation is king. Presentation will really set you apart. Remember to save some of your time to make sure your work looks good mounted and is protected and clean. That will make your work stand on its own and they'll notice that most of all when they check to see if the work and the presentation are of the same caliber.
If you're not sure about posting the images here for your submission, then don't. Again, I agree with sbeme, you can always ask the forum for help on related work that you have. Either way you'll receive support.
Thanks phtotmot and sbeme. I appreciate the comments on compostition since I do not know how will the photos be judged...at all I have no idea on the questions posed if there are categories, how the top winner is selected, no info on themes or criteria. I have looked on the website of the previous winners and ther are all over the board on subjust and skill, some all product some all portrait some a mix of lanscape fine atr protrait...so who knows. The judges are professional in the industry in town,lab guys photographers, no one from the school.
For mounting I decided to do high gloss or metallic mounted on matboard or foamcore and have them in a nice folder. Sound good?
