Last Photographer Standing - A Journey - Part 1

My Journey through the "Last Photographer Standing" competition

I had recently taken up photography when I was introduced to an on-line photo competition call "Last Photographer Standing (LPS), run on www.drin.com, which is a year long on-line photo competition. After looking at the format and around the DGrin site I decided that the LPS competition would be an excellent place to both learn about photography, get some live feedback from other photographers and gain some experience in entering photo contests.

As the competition draws to an end I wanted to capture some of the learnings I have gained over the past year, both in terms of photography as well as about myself. Over the next few days I will capture as much as I can about each of the contests that I entered.

So without further ado here goes...

Contest #1 - Chilled or Steamy

Chill(i)ed

This was my first entry for the competition and it's when I discovered that having a competition with dual themes, which are opposites, is not as straight forward as it would seem. I, along with many other entrants, fell into the trap of trying to be too witty for our own good and capture a photo that spanned both opposites.

I did have lots of fun doing this, from buying the chillies from the grocer, to sorting through them to pick the "best" ones, to making chili ice cubes out of them

I was also introduced to the harsh reality of the quality of the other photographers who were also part of this competition. The amazing thing was, that everyone was willing to share their ideas and also give feedback about an image that you were considering. I initially looked at this feedback skeptically, thinking "Why would they want to help the 'competition'?". But I have come to really appreciate both the people in this competition and the spirit in which people participate.

In this round I also put into actions some of the things I had learned from the excellent on-line course "Jodies Coston's Free On-line Photography Course". The first lesson covers moving in as close as possible to something before taking a picture, which is something that I have always tried to do where ever appropriate.

Although I didn't get any points in the competition with this image, I personally liked the image and was happy with what I had done. From the discussions in the forum I learned that this is one of the most important mental aspects about taking photos. the other side to this coin though, is that pleasing yourself, however important, doesn't guarantee you a win :-)

Next time we will look at the second round of the competition "Stately or Humble", which happened to be a very humbling round for me...

Please feel free to leave comments or questions about this and I will endeavor to answer them as soon as possible.