FEATURE
We are pleased in this edition of Teletimes to bring you the results of the Photon '94 photography contest, sponsored in part by Wimsey Information Services.
First and foremost, our thanks to those who entered. We enjoyed seeing your work, and getting to know you a little by your words and images.
The contest was an interesting experience for us here at Teletimes. We learned a lot organizing it. Mostly, we must confess, we learned how not to dot it. Specifically, we underestimated the lead time that is required to properly publicize an event of this nature. As a result we received fewer entries than we expected, and were able to attract rather less major corporate sponsorship than we had anticipated (which may have resulted in nifty hardware and software prizes). We'll do better next year, we promise! Already the gears are turning to bring you a bigger, better event...
SOUND EFFECT.......................TRUMPETS FLOURISH
International Teletimes is proud to announce the participation in Photon '95 of the prestigious British photography magazine PHOTOpro. David Kilpatrick of PHOTOpro has graciously agreed to supply twenty-five subscriptions to their renowned magazine to be used as prizes for the Photon '95 contest. In addition, winning entries will be published in a special spread in PHOTOpro, so your images will receive international recognition in a high quality print format as well as in Teletimes!
We couldn't be happier. The story of how our new friendship with PHOTOpro developed is interesting, by the way, but we'll leave it for another time. Suffice it to mention here PHOTOpro's WWW site. Tune your browser to URL=
http://www.scotborders.co.uk/photon/
And now, on with the show.
As you know, for Photon '94, we accepted entries by mail, or by electronic transfer. There are advantages to both methods. A well printed photo on fine paper is a beautiful thing, in and of itself, and will go a long way toward impressing the judges. On the other hand, a photo that has been digitized can be very quickly adjusted (colour balance, contrast, spotting, burning, dodging, etc.) to give the best presentation. At what point does this kind of treatment pass "standard photographic printing techniques" to yield a "manipulated" image? We're not sure, and we're not sure it matters. What do you think? To level the playing field, all physical entries were digitized, and displayed on the same equipment as the entries that came in electronically. No enhancement was done by us on these scans, though it was obvious in some cases where that could have improved the quality of the entries.
One other note, we received some entries by mail that were 3"*5" glossies from One-Hour-Photo-type labs. These types of labs seldom produce quality results, and are generally not going to be good enough for photo contest entries or display. Our contest details suggested "commercial reproduction quality" prints be submitted, without defining the term (my fault, Kent sheepishly admits), and this may have caused some confusion. "Commercial reproduction quality" means prints that are produced on an RC paper that are suitable for reproduction in a magazine (as opposed to expensive custom prints on archival fiber paper for gallery or museum use), not prints that come from the corner commercial lab or drugstore. We apologize if this confused any one, and took it into account in judging.
We received some particularly strong entries from three photographers who collectively walked off with most of the honors, as you will see. Also of interest to us was the number of entries from a place called Conway, Ar, USA. If we are not mistaken, there is a photography club there that reads International Teletimes. Hi, guys!
The number of submissions in the different categories was interesting. Collectively, your favorite category for entries by far this year was "Places". Every one, it seems, is out photographing their environment at top speed. Next most popular was "Small Wonders", with "People" running a distant third. (The strongest entries were in "Small Wonders". Perhaps you concentrate more if you have to look harder to even see the subject.) There was only one entry in the "Humour" event, and none at all in the "Altered" category. This last rather shocked us. Since the contest was publicized over electronic media, to people who necessarily have access to computers, we assumed that there would be a lot of you would choose to run your photos through a brace of Photoshop filters, at least. But we were wrong.
OK, enough preamble. Vancouver photographer Skai Fowler (see the Teletimes Jan. '94 issue) graciously agreed to co-judge the competition with me and to share her insights with you. International Teletimes' own Euan R. Taylor helped out with the interviews of the winners. I know you've been waiting for this, so lets get right to it.
Annnnd the winners are...
...on the next page!
Kent Barrett, Vancouver, Canada
tt-photo@teletimes.com
