National Geographic Photo Contest 2014 winners announced

Are you trying to win the best troll of the year award or something gdfthr73?

Dec 22, 2014permalink

Peter K Burian

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.

Dec 22, 2014permalink

mcshan

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

Dec 25, 2014permalink

gdfthr73

"Fall in goose-step" Really? The goose step here is to criticize for the sake of being critical. Without a shred of a constructive critique, all I see are posts from mad photographers, p$# off that they will never have an image published in NG or any other magazine.

If your truly as talented as you think you are, than give a constructive critique without the bashing or the hateful tone I see in these posts.

Dec 28, 2014permalink

mcshan

Show me where I have been hateful. Sorry but you just don't get what others are trying to tell you. Reactions to photos, books and music among other things are subjective. People are entitled to their own opinions. It is okay that we don't all agree.

Dec 28, 2014permalink

Vik2012

I like most of these. Of course, competitions are strange anyway, as people try to pick a best out of a selection that mean different things to different people.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

2stepbay

Seems the judges reside in a state that has legalized marijuana. "Grand prize winner" surely points in that direction. ;)

Dec 21, 2014*permalink

D200_4me

I guess i was under the impression that Nat Geo photos should never be heavily post-processed. I suppose I'm wrong.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

madeinlisboa

I think I'll change my hobby to fishing....

Dec 21, 2014permalink

Peiasdf

I like 1, 2, 6, 7, 8 and 10.

1 and 5 depending on personal opinion. The rest aren't very good especially 4 which has been staged so many times.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

I'm often perplexed at what wins in photo contests.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

Same here. Do you think this encourages or discourages people from participating?

Dec 21, 2014permalink

b craw

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.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

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.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

gdfthr73

Colin Franks must be the greatest photographer that has ever lived. He is the god of cameras and is the ultimate authority of what is good and bad.

Dec 22, 2014*permalink

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

Dec 22, 2014permalink

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.

Dec 22, 2014permalink

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.

Dec 22, 2014permalink

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

Dec 22, 2014permalink

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."

Dec 22, 2014*permalink

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.

Dec 22, 2014permalink

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.

Dec 23, 2014*permalink

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.

Dec 23, 2014permalink

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.

Dec 23, 2014permalink

I will agree that they are not the best I've seen. But, did you see the entries? Does this contest require a fee? Yes, you do make a valid point - I probably would not stop and look at some of these photos. But, I still don't like that you and other call them "horrible." It just seems like every time there's actual photography featured on this site, there's a ton of comments about how "poor" or "horrible" the images are, etc.

Dec 23, 2014permalink

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....

Dec 23, 2014permalink

mcshan

gdfthr73, Sadly you can't see or understand that you are guilty of exactly what you are accusing others of being. It is okay to have an opinion and express it. The reaction to photographs is subjective.

Take care.

Dec 25, 2014permalink

nawknai

#1 is something that I'd LOVE if I had taken it.

However, for a National Geographic photography winner, it's boring. The theme itself --- technology taking over our lives --- is boring, and since the photo can't survive on other attributes such as beauty or skill (e.g. the owl photo), I wonder why it wins?

Again, it's a good capture, and I'd love the photo if I had taken it myself. I do expect more from contest winners though. I'm not that great a photographer, and even I wouldn't have felt confident submitting that photo into a competition.

#2 looks overcooked. #8 (shot of the deer) is far better.

#3 is great, but not technically challenging or beautiful in any way. Same with the photo in Shinagawa train station.

Dec 21, 2014*permalink

(unknown member)

Agree.

Dec 21, 2014permalink

DrewDrew07

To Stealthy Ninja,

I'm not sure if you've been on the "Ocean Express", which is the attraction in which #1 was taken. The lighting as shown in #1 is the real lighting (or lack of lighting) when it's moving, not dramatized at all. Contrarily, the lighting as shown in http://i.imgur.com/Lt9TKZ9.jpg is not the actual lighting, flash was probably used when this photo was taken.

Dec 22, 2014permalink

b craw

I keep returning to that queer image of disembodied feet in Shinagawa Station, Tokyo. While there is something familiar in a photograph of a bustling crowd, this one is very distinctive - the degree of motion blur in the figures (to a point just shy of dematerialization) while retaining such solid form in the planted feet. The photographer's description indicates that it was not a labored photographic set-up; and this is reinforced in less-than-fussy composition. And this quality in the visual organization - minus gymnastic formal measures - creates both an ease and a power to this urban vignette. The image presented in b/w also informs the impact, a use which is not nostalgic nor particularly romantic, but rather phenomenological.

Dec 21, 2014*permalink