Photo5 Results, Recognition and Reflections

The Canon Photo5 competition has come to an end and the winners posted, but not without controversy!

I should preface this post with the disclaimer that I was an entrant in the competition, and I was very proud of my entries, confident that I had a good chance of making it to the finalists with at least one image.

Questionable Judging?

In my admittedly biased opinion, I think the judges did a poor job selecting finalists, but this was also partly due to the separation of all entries into two divisions: Amateur and Professional. The judges were asked to choose five images from each object category and for each division, for a total of 50 images, from the approximately 8000 entries.

I presume the decision to split the entrants into two divisions was perhaps to address concerns that by allowing professionals and amateurs to compete on level ground was unfair to those without access to expensive equipment and years of experience. Unfortunately, as it turns out, the number of amateur entrants far outnumbered the professionals, by as much as 20 to 1 or more, and yet they were still competing for the same number and value of prizes. The end result was that professionals were guaranteed a greater chance at winning a prize, due to the far smaller pool of images. The final quality of the professional finalists selected also reflected this much smaller pool of images, with the amateur finalists displaying on average far superior images.

As for the choices made by the judges, many have found them difficult to understand, myself included. Some of the images selected were (once again, in my opinion) unimaginative, not the best example of a particular concept, or quite simply bizarre. Among the fifty, there were indeed some exceptional photos, but the overall quality of entrants seemed to me to be only slightly above the average of all of the entrants, and not the cream of the crop.

Technical Issues

On top of this, there were some problems, that seemed like teething troubles one would not expect to find in a competition run by such a big name as Canon. Some rules were changed or “clarified” mid-competition, others were unclear even up to the due date. Images submitted were displayed as they were entered (after a 48 hour delay, presumably for screening), leading to complaints that later entries could copy the concepts of earlier ones. I personally have no problem with this, as I think the best entry of a particular concept should be selected, and users had the opportunity to change their entries up to the closing date.

Finally, some have described technical and user interface problems with the voting mechanism. While I didn’t have any problems myself, I agree that the interface used for displaying and voting on entries suffered from poor usability.

A Worthwhile Competition

Despite the problems and issues that I have described above, I think that Photo5 is an excellent competition, and I would like to see it continue in the future, perhaps with some tweaks. Canon are to be commended for running such a complex competition, and especially for the concept which encourages photographers to get creative with a mystery object and whatever equipment they have on hand.

I thoroughly enjoyed looking through all of the entries and being impressed, amazed and inspired by the many different interpretations of the objects provided by Canon. I have experimented with this concept myself with the Iron Chef Photography projects that I have run in the past and intend to revive soon.

Photos Deserving Recognition

It’s a little hollow of me to criticise the judges for their choices if I don’t “suck it up” and have a go at judging myself. Also, I would like to see some more of the possibly unrecognised photos submitted to the competition get some acknowledgement. As such, I looked through all of the entries (yes, all approximately 8000 of them) and I have chosen my favourite of each of the objects overall. I wish I could link to the photographer’s web pages, but Canon didn’t ask that information of entrants. If you would like to know more of the details of the photos I have selected below, please click on the thumbnails to see the entry on Canon’s site.

Ribbon by Sanchia	Crayon by Nicole Pragasm	Bubbles by Indigo	Umbrella by Dark Orange
Candle by Russell Arnett

And just in case you missed them, these were my entries:

Ribbon

Crayon

Bubbles

Candle

Umbrella

Update: Canon have linked to this post from their Photo5 blog! By acknowledging and promoting awareness of constructive criticism of their competition, I think Canon have demonstrated a significant degree of professionalism and sincerity in their engagement of online communities. Congratulations and thank you Canon for your honesty.