Originally posted by Liney I must admit my response was a little tongue in cheek, but nice image.
Thank you. Our little town's newspaper runs an annual contest for 12 spots in a calendar, and some honorable mentions, judged by a local resident with 40+ years as a professionally published photographer and instructor. The friendly competition has grown to include 100+ local photographers of varying experience, and it encourages me to always have a camera handy, to try and see new ways of capturing local scenes, or make that well known "postcard" landscape a bit fresh, and to keep an eye open for events, activities, or just spontaneous activities which capture the essence of life in our town and the nearby areas. At the end of the year, the winners are announced, and in viewing the winning images, I almost react with either "Where is that location?" or more often "I passed that location 1000 times, but I never saw it in the way this photographer captured it". It encourages me to refresh my point of view.
Also, the judge holds a retrospective for all the participants and interested onlookers and provides a critique of every photo for that year's calendar. His insights have proven incredibly helpful to me for improving my own photographs, primarily long before I pick up a camera. I appreciate that the judge also asks each photographer to talk about their own decision process in creating the image.
On another note, Sean Tucker has some wisdom to share:
As does Jamie Windsor