…and that’s it. Our first ever SDMB photography competition is closed! I’d like to say a huge thanks to everyone who entered, voted, joined in discussions about how to make this work.
Because we have two polls it isn’t straightforward to add up the votes. I’m on it, but it might be a day or so.
Thanks so much, Kelevra.
A little back story on the yellow house. It was taken in Nova Scotia. We were there with another couple, walking toward the ocean. I saw the house and knew it would make a great shot.
So I took photo after photo, from many different angles and perspectives. I spent about a half hour while the other three shuffled their feet impatiently. After a while they started teasing me - “got enought shots yet?”. Then afterwards throughout the vacation I was the recipient of sarcasm - “hey, maybe we’ll see another yellow house you can spend another hour with”.
Fast forward. When I showed the biggest offender the print, he said, “wow, that is really cool!”
Anyway, the photo I mentioned upthread, the one that I kept coming back to and admiring, was @TwoCarrotSnowman’s entry. That winding path through the woods just draws the eye through the trees and to the horizon. It’s the best entry, in my opinion.
I also love @Aspenglow’s work, the horizontal shades of blue behind the line of trees is wonderful, and received another of my votes.
mmm
Ah, yes. Mrs Snowman is remarkably tolerant about standing there while I spend half an hour photographing a tree or something, but I’ve learned that it’s generally best to categorise walks as “family” or “photography” in advance.
Thank you!
So no one’s going to comment on the incredible coincidence that the creator of the contest is the first winner?!?
Are we all just a bunch of suck-ups, or were most of the votes cast by Russian bots that @TwoCarrotSnowman paid to corrupt the poll? It can’t possibly be that that many people thought his crummy picture was better than my masterpiece!
Fake news! FRAUD! I refuse to concede! I demand a recount! I’ll take this all the way to the Supreme Court!
Since I’m obviously the REAL winner, I insist on setting the next cateory: wide angle pictures of sequoia trees! Entries must be submitted in the next 20 minutes.
(J/k! Congrats, @TwoCarrotSnowman!)
What a kind thing to say. 
Thank you.
We must like the same sorts of compositions, because my eye lingered long on your entry, too.
So many wonderful entries, it was hard to choose among 'em!
It truly was hard to choose. My only regret is that I would like to see a larger version of Jaycat’s photo.
If we had a like button, I’d be smashing it.
While I’m happy to take the plaudits, I’m very much part of a group of winners. By my reckoning, it’s a five-way tie between @Galactus, @TwoCarrotSnowman, @Banquet_Bear, @minor7flat5 and @solost
I can say this with some confidence, because not only does that match the percentage results in the polls, I discovered last night that the Discourse public API “posts” endpoint returns the actual number of votes for each option in a given poll, if polls are present in the post in question (but not who voted). I used this to look at the absolute votes across both polls, and verified the result. For the record, the five joint winners each received 6 votes.
There were 76 votes cast in total across both polls (and since 76 doesn’t divide exactly by 3, I think that means not everyone voted exactly 3 times).
Well done all! I really enjoyed it. I thought the standard of entries was amazing across the board (not a single duff image out of the 31 entries) and I especially loved how the theme resulted in such a wide array of pictures, from classic landscapes to macro insects to sports to portraiture.
So we go again! The rules say that if there’s a tie, the joint winners should agree a theme by the stated deadline, and also state that if a theme isn’t chosen by the deadline then it’ll be picked by the organiser. I’m happy to let the other joint-winners decide amongst themselves, with the caveat that as organiser, I’ll pick if agreement isn’t reached. The deadline for choosing is 9pm GMT on January 2nd 2023. Can I ask the other joint-winners to have a glance at the first post in this thread, which offers a little guidance as to what makes a good theme? Thanks.
I’ll work out the rest of the dates for the January competition, and create a new thread for it once the theme is picked.
Great composition of the yellow house balanced by the big boulder
The natural grouping of zimaane’s trees struck me - I just finished reading “The Secret Lives of Trees”
Wolfpup, DCnDC, Aspenglow and Jaycat captured the outdoor theme
I believe aurora_maire was the most charming submission, loved the subject and composition
Hey, an imaginary 1/5 of a win; I’ll take it!
I agree those other 4 are very worthy, mine maybe not so much. Honestly, I thought most of the entries were compositionally much better than mine, I just got lucky with the timing. I was surprised I did as well as I did in the voting.
Congrats to the winner(s). Some really fine work here.
Congrats to all, looking forward to the next contest.
Wait ‘til you see my red house! 
mmm
Is sunsets too narrow a subject?
I think that’s fine - they’re something that everyone has access to and they don’t need any special equipment to capture.
ETA: actually thinking about it some more, I’d go with “sunsets and sunrises” because it gives people twice the opportunity to enter while not changing the focus too much. It would be a shame if someone had a hard disk full of sunrise pics but couldn’t enter because the topic is sunset.
And how could anyone tell, anyway, absent a really distinctive landmark?
If I had a sunrise over the Atlantic, I’d just call it Sunset over the Pacific.
But seriously, folks, could we perhaps make it something like “Sun and/or Moon”? That would open it up to a wider range of shots, not just rising or setting.
I got some shots of moonrise in my back yard a few weeks ago that I haven’t had time to look over or work on yet. It would give me the motivation to start processing them.
Scope adds interest - life styles - fun - structures - pictures with a story (1 paragraph) - local event - red - blue - wine - stuff like that.
‘Outdoors’ allowed a wide range of interpretation.
Thank you, I am glad that you appreciated it.
Yours was good too.
Things in the sky, day or night?
Sun must be on or close to the horizon?
Good Lord, that was a real question that I wondered about the answer to. I have fallen in with the incessantly nitpicky lately. And now I want to say ‘sorry, not sorry’ for calling myself incessantly nitpicky and OH NO, I have become what I mock!
I’ve recused myself from the pick, so this is just by way of observation… but a theme of “skies” would allow for sunrises, sunsets, the moon, cloudscapes, etc.