National Geographic Photo Contest 2014 winners announced

I agree with your comment gdfthr73. Every time ANY contest posts its winning images, 75% of the comments suggest the judges are blind or idiots.

Fall in goose-step line everybody and above all each of you must share the exact same mandatory opinion that these photos are perfection.

It should strike no one's mind as a surprise that contests function the way they do - they are inherently a product of preference(s), all within shifting contexts. I may see this preference as erroneous, but then the onus falls upon me to create a competing context. It is a natural order (of struggle), and leads to the building blocks of newer forms of dialog, themselves more aligned with emerging grounds of relavence. It is not the contests which are flawed, it is the faith in them to deliver validation which is askew of circumstance.

I've seen the "winners" of local contests that were truly atrocious.
I feel the following of this NatGeo contest:

People:

1: Not bad, but the winner?
2: Horrible
3: Horrible
4: Not bad
5: Pfft
6: Pfft
7: Horrific
8: Meh

Places:

Winner: Horrible
2: Meh
3: Horrible
4: Meh

Nature:

Winner: Not bad; nice tone in the B&W; might be better if the subject wasn't centered.
2: Great capture.
3: Nice, but in center
4: Awesome!
5: Meh
6: Meh
7: Meh

This contest would have had a lot of entries, and I suspect others would have been better choices.
NatGeo is always looking for that "story-telling" thing, so they have their own perspective. I must say that I am shocked at 90% of the images that NatGeo "Your Shot" places on their Facebook page - they are truly awful, complete with crooked horizons. They are so poor, that it seems they are posted without any human making the decision, or the person making the decision knows nothing about photography.

gdfthr73, he was just expressing his personal view that's all.
Why do you need to be so snide?

Being snide is easy when you can hide in anonymity. My opinion is valid whether I have never taken a picture before, or am the best in the world. What I'm saying is: compared to the number of jaw-dropping, top-shelf images I see every day on the internet which make me feel like I'm a hack, these "winners" and most of the honourable mentions are just not that great.

I'm often perplexed by clearly amateur photographers who feel it's okay to call winning images from a well respected contest (with very qualified judges) "horrible" without any reasoning. That's especially true when the criticism is coming from someone who specializes in generic bird photos, sunsets, and other cliche images. Do I love everyone of the winning images? No. Do I understand why they won? Yes.

Apparently Jeff didn't bother to read my last post.

Colin, I read it. And, I disagree. Calling another image "horrible" requires some credibility (besides being disrespectful and ignorant). What you consider "jaw-dropping," credible judges probably consider rote. A "great" image is defined by much more than if it has "crooked horizons."

Then we agree to disagree. Take the third photo in the "people" category for example. To suggest that this image (with a crooked horizon) has some deep, photographic greatness that is apparent only to "qualified" judges, smacks of the logical fallacy known as "the appeal to authority".

Historically, this is the same tactic used by religious "authorities". Don't dare question; don't dare doubt; just accept & believe like good little sheep.

If you feel that this image in particular is worthy of one of the final selections in a world-wide photo contest, that's fine, some people like the taste of liver too. Perhaps you feel that it must contain some worthiness simply because it was selected by some "judges". I do not.

Colin, I do understand your point of view. You disagree with the judges, I get it. I just think it's arrogant to call the work of others "horrible." I like the photo with the crooked horizon. I like most of the shots that won.

Then I feel that you still really don't understand. After I said that I'm regularly humbled by the work of others, you still accuse me of "arrogance". This manufactured, hair-trigger reaction is understandable in our world of political correctness gone mad, so let me put it to you this way:

If you had come across these images whilst surfing the 'net (let's say on various Flickr pages or wherever), I respectfully suggest that you would certainly have not given them more than a nano-second of interest. In fact, I suggest that you would have deemed them as the epitome of "meh".

But, place them as winners or honourable mentions in a "National Geographic" contest, and suddenly you're hypnotized by them as somehow being great! And why? Well, after all, there have been some "serious" "expert" photography people who - complete with a wrinkled brow and chin in their hand while viewing said images - somehow see something that the masses cannot, and they simply must be correct.

Again, based on the awesomeness I see on the internet (like 500px), I just don't feel that most of the images from this contest are anything special. The owl is killer though.

Perhaps using the word horrible was a bit off side; I guess I'm just weary of these sorts of images winning contests.

Onwards & upwards....