What Makes a Winning Image

Today's two images show the high ISO images produced by the Samsung EX1.  The likeable in-camera vignetting effect aside, the nicely balanced noise adds a great film-like quality to the final images.  They are as good as the GRD III's in my opinion, if not better.

The reason to show the two photos -- there is something in them I really wish to show you -- sort of echos a recent post on Mike's TheOnlinePhotographer featuring a disturbing winning photo of a British photo contest.  It is disturbing because the photo is a very casual, and actually awful, shot which no one would even think about it otherwise.  Long story short, Mike later concludes from his experience that as judges of past photo contests, he would pick the ones as winners in which there was something he really wished to show the viewers. 

Talking about that "man on the grass" winning photo, a similar story immediately sprang to mind: this year's Hong Kong Ricoh Photo Contest.  Since GX Garnerings had asked readers to vote for the winners as a show of support (well, lots of us are Ricoh camera fans), we hoped to follow up and bring back the news of the result for the voters.  But when we went over to the organiser's page, what we found were comments of frustrated participants to protest against the result.

The result poses a challenge to the usual understanding of what makes a winning image.  Surely, there are rules for different contests.  In this case, maybe the rule just overrode photographic considerations.  But for those who agree with the conclusion of "something in an image the judge really wants to show viewers" as the judging criteria, the "man on the grass" shot and the winning trios really shed new light on the matter.