The Crestock Photography Contest 2007

Feel free to submit this contest to www.photographyvoter.com

Lets start to take some photos...
Yeah...

After taking the most amazing trip I’ve ever had, and taking piles of photos, I think I’ve caught a slight fever… known as the photography bug. I loved taking photos while I was there, thinking about the lighting, the background̷...

I am wondering if photomontages will be taken into consideration or not?
Any photoshoping? What judges are thinking about using digital techniques in photography?:)
thanks for answer

Lacking photography motivation? Perhaps a Canon 1Ds Mark II is the inspiration you're looking for? OH YEAH!

I know that I kind of dropped the ball on the photoblog. I will be getting back into it today. After not having my computer for a week, I had a lot of catch up to do in getting synced back up and the like. For you photographers out there, the stakes...

Excellent competition... we have now listed you on http://www.photocompetitions.com

Would you like to win a Canon EOS 1Ds Mark III 10.1MP Digital SLR Camera? Crestock (a stock photography company) is giving you the chance to win three great cameras including the 1Ds (also up for grabs is a Leica D-LUX 3 and a Nikon D40x bundled...

are we limited to one entry? or can we enter as many pics as we want?

The technology is advancing very fast these days. I'm curious about the clarity of pictures in 10 or 15 years

Reply to Bolandrotor: limited post-processing is of course allowed for entries to the contest, but as stated in point 3 of the rules: "The addition of elements not found in the original image is not allowed", so collages are better reserved for the next incarnation of our Photoshop contest in the autumn.

Only one image can be entered for each round, as described in the contest summary above.

The contest is FREE to enter and anyone can take part, aspiring amateurs as well as pro shooters. Just sign up and submit your best photo for a chance to win one of our fantastic prizes.

I find it very frusturating when I look through some of these pictures and I see carbon copies of other work from well noted and acomplished photographers. It is one thing I think to take an idea and use it as your own for a home photo, or your own entertainment. But the blaten copying of another persons idea or style and entering a contest with it to pass it off as your own? I think people need to step back from life for a moment and compose some origonal work and see what they can do. Some of the photos in here that are similar to anne geddes work are wonderful!!!! The lighting, the rich blacks and white whites its great work. But show the world YOUR OWN IDEAS!!!!!!!!!!

The Crestock Photography Contest 2007 is open, and the prizes are definitely worth a look. Broken into three rounds, the prizes are as follows: a Leica D-LUX 3 for round 1, a Nikon D40x plus PhotoShop CS3 for round 2, and the big one, the Canon 1Ds MK ...

The contest is FREE to enter and anyone can take part, aspiring amateurs as well as pro shooters. Just sign up and submit your best photo. Haje Jan Kamps of Photocritic & Darren Rowse of Digital Photography School are two of the judges.

Ya, that’s right the folks over at Crestock are holding a photo contest over the next couple months and are giving away some nice schwag to to the winners!

Beautiful camera, I would love to win it!

So in this contest- which I entered early...How are people supposed to find our work if it's buried on page 37...? My image is image id=636 but there is no categorization or search. There are great images, but is the contest going to be skewed to favor late entries?

This is what the rules of the contest say: "Once an entry has been submitted it cannot be changed, so make sure you submit the correct and final version of your image."

This is all good, except the fact that something in the upload process totally screwed up the image AFTER uploading in a way that couldn't been foreseen by me.
The noise in the image has totally corrupted the image.
Please consider removing this entry and allowing me to upload a version that wont be corrupted when re-scaled.

If this isn't possible please remove the image from the competition, i don't want anyone to see it in the current state.

Regards,

/Angel

Response to the comment above: The distorted upload has been fixed, now the image looks the way it should again.

The Crestock Team

Can I see the entry sent by Dear Angel,asyou have responded to.Thanks.

It is impractical to believe that to cast vote properly a person will look at all (more than 1000 !) the photographs browsing through more than 70 pages for nothing ! In most cases only the near and dear ones of a photographer will vote for his or her photograph and in no way that should be considered as a 'Judgement' ! So, the winner should be selected ONLY by the eminent Judges considering the quality as well as the content of the Photographs.

Hi,

Two notes :
1) i cant find my image because its buried in the mass,i dont see it in votes
2) I dont wont to sound pretensiouse but most of the images here are very mediochcre,surely it would be better that the winner was judged by the pic editors? as nobody is going to bother ploughing through all these images?

Thanks

Surely the photos should be randomly sorted? the photos in the middle don't really stand a chance.

Round 1 of the contest is now closed for submissions with an incredible 1700 entries. As many contest contributors have already commented, it is highly problematic to ensure equal exposure with this number of photos entered. It is simply unrealistic to expect that many people will time to look through that number of images in order to cast their votes. This is a situation which encourages various types of manipulations in order to gain added exposure for your image in the overwhelming mass of images.

We have therefore found it necessary to put the entries in round 1 through a pre-voting selection process which has resulted in an edited Top Entries list of approximately 500 entries. The theme for round 1 was particularly broad, so the selection process has favoured entries that address the theme in a creative and visually exciting manner.

While some contestants will be disappointed to find that they are not included in the Top 500 Entries list, we are sure most of you will appreciate us taking this step in order to ensure the integrity of the contest.

The Crestock team

I think it is outrageous that you just delete the close to 1.300 images! People have spent time registering, uploading, looking, commenting on those images and you just throw them out?! This is not a question about not being chosen, this is about 1.300 people having a certain kind of pride in the images they take and you ruining a perfect opportunity of creating goodwill and a sense of community around this contest. You have every right to do what you do, but why not just make the "top 500" and then divide up the photos instead of deleting the work of 1.300 people?? This is highly arrogant in my view! Comments, votes and people's sense of inclusiveness has just been erased with the click of a mouse - and within what seems like a two hour review. This is *not* appreciated and clearly does not go well together with your proclaimed sense of quality! At least have the decency to showcast the remaining images somewhere else on the site.

Massimo Fiorentino

I am with you on this one Massimo...here is a sample of my entry http://business.fiu.edu/testing/r.jpg, how can Crestock excuse deleting this image and leaving up there images not only of inferior quality, but images that are not related to the contest at all? I would say let the users decide by voting.

I sent out an email to my wife and work and then to a few of my friends with a link to my photo. I was one chosen. My photo appeared on page 4.
when my wife went to the link, as did several others, all they saw were the words "photo deactivated" What the hell does that mean????

http://www.crestock.com/blog/photography/contest2007/entry.aspx?id=1495

Yes, it's way to much trouble to scroll through that many pages of photo's. Please thumbnail them and let us click to enlarge the ones we are interested in viewing closer.

Most photography contests are narrowed down to the judges' top 10 or 20 list, then users vote on those for the winner. I was glad to hear that a lot of the images were removed. Otherwise it would have taken a loooonnnnngggggg time looking through all the photos and only the last days of images that were uploaded would have been voted on. There was a lot of images that really had nothing to do with "The Meaning of Life".

i submitted a photo and now i can no longer find it in the entries...where is it? what happened?

I can't find mine either. Brilliant.

With all due respect to Crestock, and recognising the work they have put into this competition, I think that it's an error to have public voting.

Public voting is:

a) Wide open to abuse. It's already appears that some images are getting far more votes than they deserve.
b) Prone to error. Even though the organisers have cut the number down to 490 images, what member of the public is going to take the time to carefully and fairly assess that many images?
c) Fickle. Images on the first and last few pages are going to get far more exposure than those buried in the middle. And that applies to an image's position on the page too. Internet users have a notoriously short attention span and images at the top of a page are going to be viewed far more often.

Scrap the public judging please and leave the decision to your experts who will take the time and trouble.

Thanks

With all due respect Bateleur, this issue has nothing to do with public voting, but about just deleting 1.300 images with no regard whatsoever of the people behind those images.

Public voting is possible. JPG Magazine has done it for a long time with great success, so it's not an excuse to wipe off images without - at least - giving people the benefit of their efforts and displaying the images *elsewhere*. Fine - 490 pictures have been sorted out - just fine, but don't *delete* the rest. And furthermore: if this had been an issue of photos not getting the attention they deserve, there are lots of way as to improve searching and selecting - again JPG Magazine is a splendid example. If you're not willing to foresee a success with all its consequences, then don't create a public vote based competition. Or at least: think carefully before you act.

Just erasing photos is beyond the aura of the words: "anyone can take part, aspiring amateurs as well as pro shooters. Just sign up and submit your best photo for a chance to win one of our fantastic prizes.". It goes strictly against the nature of social computing and is arrogant, no matter the cause.

And again: this has nothing to do with sorting out images or the inherit errors in public voting: It's a principle of ignoring the works of a lot of people without providing an alternative, at least in the imbued spirit of the phrase "anyone can take part".

I am ranting now, I know, but I think it is not fair. Now I am *very sorry* for bringing this up for the two folks out there that has submitted the images of a heart shape in a book, created by the shadow of a filter, because the images are very fine and beautiful, but the Crestock "experts" has chosen not one, but two images of this exact same kind. And the composition is (and I apologise again to the people involved, because I am only speaking out of principle) not unique in any way. Take a look at

http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=heart+filter&m=text

...and compare for yourselves. I have also seen this image numerous times elsewhere, also in stock photography pools.

What grounds are there to sort out and delete an image I saw, voted and commented on (and yes, I spent close to three hours going through the close to 1780 images), that had originality, punch, political satire and good composition, in favour of two "commonplace" (sorry!) images of exact same kind? I just ask...

In response to Massimo's valid points and concerns raised above:
We feel it is important to point out that the 1300 entries that unfortunately didn't make it onto the 'top entries' list, were not 'ereased with the click of a mouse', but assessed individually, as where the ones that DID make it into the top entries.

In many photo contests only a handful of images ever make it as far as being viewed by the public. In this contest more than 25% of the submitted images are still in that position, and in the running for the prize, which we think is quite good.

We do appreciate that having all entries displayed initially, and subsequently only displaying the top entries might have given the wrong impression, so this will be done differently from now on. We are also considering to put all the entries for round 1 back on display once the voting is finished. We did not, however, intend to disrespect anyone who's taken time to participate in the contest by not including their photo among the top entries.

This is a photo competition after all, so in the end only one of those images will be the winner of round 1. The remaining 1700+ entries will – technically speaking – be loosers. That does not mean that they are poor images, just that they have been judged not quite as good as the very best image in the entire contest.


Regarding the comment from Massimo just above this one: we would prefer not to comment on individual entries at this stage of the contest, everyone else should feel free to share their views.

The Crestock team

I tried to see al the photos and yes, it is hard.
After your selection, in the 500 remaining photos are a lot of digitaly manipulations and photos that do not touch the subject. And some photos good in the subject was eliminated.

To solve the problem, in the next rounds you must make a preselection before the starting of the vote.

For the first round the correct way is to reintroduce all the photos, at the end of the selection – if someone has not the time to see all the photos, it has the posibility to view only the first 500 selected by Crestock, this is not a problem.

For the first round the correct way is to reintroduce all the photos, at the end of the selection – if someone has not the time to see all the photos, it has the posibility to view only the first 500 selected by Crestock, this is not a problem.

Thank you Crestock, for getting back on this subject. It would be nice to see that the non-exclusive entries could be shared and discussed, among all the participants, like in what seemed to be the original intention with the contest - winners or not.

I am new to the site and to the contest but wanted to thank those responsible for it!

all the best!

I have 2 questions:
1. Are there any idea about receiving comments concerning to deactivated image? May be via e-mail?

2. Is it possible to upload new one if image was deactivated?

Tanks in avance

It would be nice to know if our images were eliminated or not. Could you at least notify us if we are eliminated?

I have successfully submitted a photo for the 2nd round yesterday, but it has not appeared on the list yet. Can you shed some light on this? Thank you.

Massimo Fiorentino

I think the voting therms are not very sure... would not be better to limit voting photos to the people that uploaded a photo for the contest? I colud build 100 e-mail addres to vote... or spam to all my contacts the address of my photo.
I hope the judges value will be more important than this voting method

I submitted an image on Sunday. Two days have passed and there still isn't any trace of it on this site. If you are sorting out entries already upon submission, please state so! This is getting highly frustrating!

I could just as well choose not to be part of this, but I really thought this looked like a brilliant contest and wanted to give it a shot. Now, I start to think differently...

Me too ... I submitted a photo on Saturday and it's like the image has been swallowed by a black hole. No indication of where it is ... accepted? ... rejected? ... still being considered?

Wherever these photos are, please let us know. It would be much appreciated.

Now you say it Bateleur, it seems like no photos has been submitted for days. I haven't noticed any changes since Sunday anyway...

Dear contest judge,

1. I am surprised that you have not published none of my two images sent for round 1 and round 2

2. I am not even sure that your system has even uploaded the second one but I can't upload another one

3/ Checking some of the actual entries, I found bizare that mine have not even been published on the site for voting.

Here was my point of view ...
Good luck

In response to the questions about what's happening to submissions for round 2: Mainly due to the potentially explicit subject matter in round 2, we felt it neccessary to be able to view and assess the entries for this round before they go live on the entries page. In most cases this takes hours rather than days, but as several of you have noticed, the entries submitted at the weekend were not assessed until Monday morning.

If you submitted to round 2, you should have received information about this once your photo was sucessfully submitted: "If your image makes it onto the shortlist of entries, it will appear among the entries for round 2, and Crestock members can vote on your entry from Monday 21st of May to Monday 4th June."

The final shortlist for round 2 will be the images that are on view when voting starts next Monday, 21st May.

We hope this clarifies things.

Crestock have said that they would decide 50% of the outcome themselves, so if the 1300 that got removed were ones they decided did not meet the grade then why keep them further? Just face the facts that your image was not good enough and get on with life.

Goosey, you hit the nail on the head, my friend...

kk

Crestock have said that they would decide 50% of the outcome themselves - so after removing the photos only the public vote must decide the winner. If Crestock vote again, this means 66.66% Crestock decision (33.33% the removing of photos +33.33% the vote). Moreover, removing 1300 photos of 1700 is 62%, not 50.....

I have submitted my photo on 20 th
May but unfortunately it has not been displyed for votting . Where is my photo ? If you have decided that you would not display it please confirm me that you will not use it any where. thanking you.

Any submitted photos that are not being displayed have unfortunately not been shortlisted for their respective round.

@akd: your photo was sadly not among the shortlisted images in round 2. Although it was a good photo in its own right, monks on a pilgrimage did not seem sufficiently relevant to this particular contest theme. We can confirm that your photo will not be used in any other way.

The Crestock Team

so, i've uploaded a photo for speed demon contest. it's in theme. but isn't listed.can i know why? thanks.

It seems that the photos chosen for the shortlist are being picked almost randomly, as I continue to see low quality photos of little relevance being displayed, with numerous interesting and relevant photos (submitted by people I know) not being chosen at all. It makes me question the entire process. I can't imagine what kind of reasonable, conscious selection process would result in this kind of imbalance. It sounds like there are too many judges with too different tastes involved in the initial selection process. I would love to see a separate publishing of the non-selected photos, so everyone can see what didn't make it through. Make the process transparent!

We must say that we do not recognise Submitter's description that interesting and relevant images are being ignored in favour of randomly chosen and irrelevant images.
Unfortunately we do receive a relatively large number of images that exhibit no discernible attempt at addressing the theme, even in its broadest possible sense, which unfortunately makes it necessary to do a pre-selection process. Of course, there can never be 100% agreement on a subjective point like this, which is why we err on the side of caution.

The vast majority of images not currently shortlisted for round 3 fall into one of the following categories:
1. Images where we cannot detect any signs that the photographer has understood or addressed the fact that this is intended to be a themed photo contest.
2. Entries where the 'speed' theme has been addressed by adding a quick motionblur filter in Photoshop to a static image that would not otherwise have qualified.
3. Images that do address the theme, but are deemed to fall well short of expectations in terms of the technical and aesthetic qualities you would reasonably expect in a photo contest like this. Images with a strong 'snapshot' feel could fall into this category.

We should point out that the shortlist of images is constantly evolving up until the submission deadline, when the final selection of images will be made available based on the quality and number of images received.

The Crestock Team

The Crestock Photo Contest we mentioned a while back has announced its Round one winners and they are excellent. Round one asked for photos that portrayed “the meaning of life.” Currently voting for round two, “feeling sexy” are...

Sorry to say that my photograph titled as above did not find a place to upload for voting. But a large number of Photographs uploaded for voting is not matching with the theme and doesn't deserve to be uploaded in this prestigious contest and also can't stand beside my photograph, which is not prequalified. If possible please let the eminent judges see my photograph 'Rapelling' and realise the consequences. Thanks to Crestock team.

Regrettably, two images have been disqualified and removed from round 2 of the contest because of serious breaches of the following points of the contest rules:

- Only one image can be entered per contestant for each round of the contest.
- Any one person may only cast a single, positive vote for each contest image.

A small number of entries have had individual votes disqualified, again because the contest rules were not followed.
We would much prefer not having to take such action, but we have a commitment to keep the contest as fair as possible for all contestants, particularly given the prizes that are up for grabs.

The Crestock Team

I made the suggestion that the photos being chosen for the shortlist seemed to be picked almost randomly (or at least by different judges with different standards) for a couple of reasons. The first is that, while it appears that, on average, every other photo is rejected, occasionally there will be a large group all in a row that are rejected (3286 - 3294; 3493 - 3500) and later a large group all in a row that are accepted (e.g. 3100-3108), a number of which don't seem to fit the theme especially well. The second reason is there are quite a few selections that I am extremely surprised have been chosen . . . ones that I think would very well fit into the category you referred to as a "snapshot". Both 3199 and 3521 look to have been captured without much care and not with the planning or timing that the descriptions would suggest. Metaphorically, it's almost the same as if someone clumsily tripped and fell, but when they claim they did it on purpose, we praise them for their sense of humor and agility. Also, I don't understand why photos like 3595 and 3615, and many others were chosen. Aside from their poor quality, they appear to have no connection with the theme of the contest at all.

Since it passed few days and my image isn't in the entries. i have to think that my image was not selected right? Well, i see a lot of images that absolutely don't fit into "Speed Demon" theme... i was submitting a Maserati drifting in a circuit.... and obviously this is not in theme... bah, maybe only the "premium" account can submit images in these contest? ;);)

Perhaps the Crestock people are getting tired of seeing the same shot over and over and over again....another speeding car, another speeding train, another speeding animal, another "ironic" image of something that is slow going fast, blah, blah, blah......

On last thursday I sent a photo to this (3.) round of the contest and I still can not see it among the entries(it called Tünde).

Just wonder why mine, and my friends picture haven´t showed up among the entries in round 3 yet? Mine is an demonic looking woman with a Sin City-feel to it moving towars the camera with her hair and coat moving in the rush, and grass swirling around her. And my friends picture is one flying dove, and one who has been catched in a step at Collusseum in Rome. As far as I can see those two would have been in the competition, because they aren´t one among many other similular pictures, and fits to the theme, and are in nice quality. I started to wonder when I saw al the snapshot-likely pictures that have been choosen, the ones with a kind of poorly quality, and the manipulated ones that has also passed through the Crestock Themes first pick..

Surf over to Crestock.com and check out the amazing action shots submitted for thier photo contest. Sprinting greyhound by EcoShow...

Am I to assume that votes and comments mean nothing in this contest? The final descision all rest upon the judges?

I can't see any comments here that suggest the votes don't count, but I can confirm that the public votes count 50% in this contest and the judges' votes make up the other 50%.
The comments do not count towards determining the winner in any way, but we hope most of the participants will appreciate getting feedback on their images.

The Crestock Team

IN ROUND 3 there are three photographs from same person Names are DIPA, DPR and Nitu . You can see the comments list, from same persons. How you are allowing them. How they qualify?

i don't believe that the votes matter in this contest...be sensible crestock people...you make the rules, you make exceptions to the rules...look at the winning entries...they were not the highest voted ones...stop the nonsense voting, just judge the entries as you would...

Real photograph (No Photoshop Effect)!

First of all many thanks for all comments and votes!!!

"By pie on Saturday, 9 June 2007 6:14 AM

its a nice photo but i dont think leaves move that fast...in reality, they are just flown away by the wind unlesss it is a whirlwind but this photo doesnt look like it has a twister... this is false..
Post Processed Effects ? "

"By Dark Watcher on Sunday, 10 June 2007 1:41 PM

I have to echo the comments by Pie - this looks awfully photoshopped. Not sure that it fits the theme really. A bit of a confusing photograph really. "

This photograph was taken during leaves fall and at the same time it was taken with long exposure time 1/4 sec and during this time I wirl the camera!!!
This is the secret of the photograph and such dinamic effect...

Wow. There were so many great photos in the contest. To everyone who voted for my photo, thank you. To everyone who entered, great work.

cool post, thanks for sharing. i love photography..

Rajj

I highly recommend checking out the Shutterpond Photo Contests! They are great! I won a $100 bucks!

He is Right!