New Wall: Floating Feather
- At March 11, 2009
- By Neil Creek
- In walls
1
A new free background image is available today!
This image is free for you to use however you like, as long as you abide by the following Creative Commons lisence:
You can also purchase a fine art print of the image. Just click on the “Buy Print” button on the image’s page. If you use the image, please tell your twitter friends with the link below the image.
PROJECT: Iron Chef Photography – Paperclip
- At December 01, 2008
- By Neil Creek
- In Projects
- 10
Secret ingredient:
Paperclip
Photo: TooFarNorth – CC
It’s been a while since we last had a project here, so I thought it was about time. In the past, the Iron Chef Photographer projects have been very popular, and in the wake of the recent Australian Canon Photo5 competition with the same concept, I thought it would be fun to do another. For those who are new to the blog, the Iron Chef Photographer projects challenge everyone to take a creative or compelling photograph featuring a mystery subject. This time, the item is a paperclip.
Your submissions must be a photo of a paperclip or paperclips. By this I mean that it must be the main subject, or the focus of the image. It can be any kind of paperclip, the traditional kind, plastic coated or one of the new modern designs. It can be in its original form, or bent into an interesting shape. It can be by itself or combined with other objects, perhaps as a craft project.
You can go for any of a number of styles of photos too. You could simply take a beautiful photo of a paperclip, or you may want to use it in a clever way that conveys a powerful message. Maybe spell out a message directly by bending the paperclip into letters, or perhaps use the paperclip to demonstrate some amazing scientific principle. Its up to you.
The item, however, MUST be a paperclip. This excludes staples, pins, spring clips, clamps or any other kind of fasteners that one would not call a paperclip.
To participate in the project, simply take your photo, upload it to your Flickr account, and tag the image: lpncironchefpaperclip by the closing date of December 25th AEST
Project rules
- The photo must contain a clearly visible paperclip or paperclips as the subject or focus of the composition.
- This must be a physical and literal paperclip, or its impression.
- The subject of the photo must be appropriate for a general audience. Implied artistic nudity is acceptable, but not more than that. The final decision about entry appropriateness is mine.
- Use any camera that you like.
- The photo must be taken within the period of the project: Dec 1st – Dec 25th AEST.
- I will be accepting ONE and only one entry per person, so pick your best shot.
- All photos are to be uploaded to Flickr – this is for practical reasons to allow me to easily display the images. Flickr accounts are free, and I highly recommend one to all photographers.
- Entries must allow access to “All Sizes” (set in your Flickr preferences by default), otherwise I have to use a workaround to save the image.
- Submissions will be identified and linked, there are no anonymous submissions to this project.
- The vote will determine the winner of the Public Choice.
- Unlike previous projects, there will be no judges selecting winners this time.
- To submit your photo as an entry to the project, it MUST be uploaded to Flickr and given the tag: lpncironchefpaperclip
- You agree to the Terms of Entry
- These rules may change at any stage during the project if I feel that it is necessary.
Whether a photograph is appropriate is finally up to my discretion. If I reject an entry, I’ll give a full explanation why. You may take another photo and submit that in its place. It pays to submit your entry early!
Judging
Once the due date has passed, I’ll collate the entries and make a voting page where the photos can be seen by everyone. Readers will choose their favourite entry and place a vote for it. Voting will close on DECEMBER 30th (midnight AEST) and the results will be posted to the blog the next day.
Make sure you read and agree to the Terms before submitting your entry.
Links
You can see the submissions as they are uploaded here.
You may discuss the project and share your photos or any alternatives you choose not to submit in the Learning Photography with Neil Creek Forum.
Have fun and good luck!
Terms: Any photo that you submit remains your sole property. I (Neil Creek) make no claims of ownership or copyright. By submitting your photo, you grant me the right to include a copy of the photo, or a thumbnail of the photo in future posts on the blog (Neil Creek – Photographer) for the purposes of conducting the project, or to be used as an illustrative example in other future blog posts, or for the promotion of this project elsewhere on the blog or on other sites not controlled by me. In all cases all photos displayed for any purpose will be properly attributed and links will be provided to the creator where possible. You also agree to allow me to place advertising on pages on this blog where your photo appears for the purposes of promoting a prize sponsor, or general advertising on the site, without any compensation. Voting results are final. Any information collected as part of this project will be used only for the purposes of running the competition, and for the promotion of future projects. Your information will never be sold or given to third parties. You agree to allow Neil Creek or his representatives to contact you in future via your Flickr account to notify you about points of interest regarding this project, and to advise you of future projects. By clicking submit on the form above, you acknowledge that you have read, understand and agree to these terms.
Photo5 Results, Recognition and Reflections
- At November 12, 2008
- By Neil Creek
- In Projects
- 4
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.
Fine Art PhotoBlog – My new venture
- At February 12, 2008
- By Neil Creek
- In Feature, Links
- 2
Officially launched yesterday, the Fine Art PhotoBlog is a new web site that combines a fine art photo gallery, a blog and a search engine. With six incredibly talented and experienced photographers from around the world, I have been working hard over the last couple of months to build the site. It’s been kept a secret all this time, but now I can tell you all about it!
The idea behind the site is to publish one photo every day, from one of seven photographers, one each per week. These are our very best photos, and they are all available to purchase as a high quality fine art print sold via an online print vendor (I’m using ImageKind), or as an individually produced, signed collectors print of the highest possible quality.
You can read the full details on our press release. I suggest you visit the site and have a look at some of the incredible photographers whose company I have been honored to keep. I am so thrilled to be a part of this incredible, unique project, and I am very excited about the possibilities.
Even if you are not looking to buy any prints, you are welcome to visit our site and subscribe to our feed. You’ll see a stunning new photo every day, and we will all be thrilled if you enjoy looking at them.
Fine Art PhotoBlog main page:
Polarised plastic – P356 Jun07
- At June 08, 2007
- By Neil Creek
- In Experimental, Nature, Things
- 1
Today I came across a fantastic little tutorial that reminded me of a cool optics phenomenon that I learned about in physics in high school. Based in the principle of polarised light, the following magnificently coloured images are of common transparent plastic objects when viewed through a polarising filter and backlit with a polarised light source.
If you have an LCD monitor, a polarising filter (or possibly even polarising sunglasses) and a camera, you can achieve this effect yourself. Make sure you check out the tutorial linked above!
This is an object that almost everyone would have on hand, which also shows lovely subtle colour variations. In a spindle of blank CDs, the bottom one is usually a clear one which protects the last CD. Because it’s clear, it’s well suited to this kind of image. The radial line you can see at about 11 oclock looks to me like it might be the point at which the molten plastic met opposite the injection point in the mold.
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