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HOME TOPICS ABOUT ME And it wasn't just the number of photos that amazed us. The overall quality was just as impressive. |
technofile Al Fasoldt's reviews and commentaries, continuously available online since 1983 Stars/Technofile Photo Contest winners, chosen from 1,100 entriesGeneral Category winnersStylized Category winners Youth Category winners Al's Personal Favorites April 14, 2002 By Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard When I met with the editors of Stars Magazine to plan our first digital photo contest last year, we hoped we'd get at least 50 entries. Instead, we received nearly 400. This year, when we got together to set up the second annual contest, we tried to make a better guess so we'd know what we'd be up against. Would we get 400 again? The country was at war, and memories of the tragic losses of last September were still fresh. We might not even get the same response this year as we got last year. Or so we thought. Can you spell "deluge" five times fast? We had more than 1,100 entries for this year's contest from more than 300 photographers. We were overwhelmed. And it wasn't just the number of photos that amazed us. The overall quality was just as impressive. You can see for yourself on this site and in this week's issue of Stars magazine, distributed with the Sunday editions of The Post-Standard. (If you live in Central New York, pick up a back issue or start subscribing. It's the best newspaper of its size in the country. Go to www.syracuse.com for information on subscribing.) The photos that were entered showed that digital photography is clearly just as much of an art as film photography is. The medium does not matter. In some ways, digital photos are easier to take than film-based pictures are, and you might think that would pull down the overall quality. But that's not what we saw in the hundreds upon hundreds of images that flooded our contest mailbox. I'll admit that we came across some that were out of focus and some that were too dark or too light, and I won't deny that seeing dozens of pictures of cats in various states of repose - cats seem to be the No. 1 subject matter for home photographers these days - can challenge my artistic curiosity. But even the cat photos were better this year. So were the kid pictures and the scenics. Blissfully, we didn't get as many sunset photos as we did last year. I love sunsets as much as you do, but images of sunsets demand a lot of detail - a lot of resolution, in the jargon of digital photography - and that's one thing most digital cameras still lack. Your response to our contest had a deeply personal effect, too. I was encouraged to buy a new digital camera - a 5.2-megapixel model from Sony, which I'll be reporting on soon - and I even had some of my new digital photos printed as giant-size enlargements, as big as the posters you see at the movies. They're stunning, and I'll share them with you soon. But that can come later. Sit back and enjoy the winning photos, here and on my Web site. You won't need any further proof that digital photography has grown up fast. |