I submitted the three photos below to the yearly online competition of the Dutch “Fotobond“. This is the national federation of photo clubs in Holland. The competition is for members only (I just became a member by joining Fotogroep Waalre) and closes at the end of November. I expect roughly 1000 competitors and thus 3000 submissions (max 3 submissions per person). The Fotobond has 6000 members.
This is the first time I participated in a Fotobond competition. Electronic submissions are also pretty new for the Fotobond: the organization has a long history of prints framed in mattes. The 10 best photos of the 2008 Photo Online competition are online here.
Lisbon street
400 ISO, 200 mm, f/5.6, 1/350 s
Lisbon twilight
ISO 400, 70 mm, f/4, 1/60 s
Palace of Carlos I, Alhambra, Granada
ISO 200, 24 mm, f/4, 1/30 s
In the third image I had to remove the foot of a tourist who just started to come into the picture. Interestingly the foot is reasonably visible, but people tend to overlook it.
The results are now in. Grades are on a scale from 0 to 30. The two best photos (out of roughly 2000 submissions) got 26 points. If you got 23 points or more, the photo belonged to the top 1%.
Square picture: 16 points (top 40%)
Pink sky picture: 17 points (top 30%)
Staircase: 19 points (top 12%)
The best images can be viewed as http://fotobond.nl/wedstrijden/fo2009/Topfotos_FotoOnLine_2009.pdf
Ironically a certain Chris Treffers got 21 points (top 4%) with an image of the same staircase in Granada, but seen from the bottom rather than the top, and with a model – even though I still think that staircase is not photographed very often.
[...] Foto-online competition 2009 [...]