[Mister Pita]

BBC - Earth News - European Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2010

I'm trying to understand how the cheetah shot won? Can someone possibly explain, cause I can't understand it.

Awesome!!! Hey, I could win one of these competitions after all! Use the little built-in flash, set shutter at 1/125 or lower in Tv Mode, close one eye to estimate distance and preset using focus ring manually, stand behind a tree in the dark with half a bottle of Jim Beam, and wait for your kid to wrangle a starving cat past. Do-able! When's the next one like that?

[unixrevolution]

Awesome!!! Hey, I could win one of these competitions after all! Use the little built-in flash, set shutter at 1/125 or lower in Tv Mode, close one eye to estimate distance and preset using focus ring manually, stand behind a tree in the dark with half a bottle of Jim Beam, and wait for your kid to wrangle a starving cat past. Do-able! When's the next one like that?

I'd make the experience that much more authentic by using a meterless scale-focus camera and guestimating absolutely everything. I'd even block off the viewfinder so I can't compose properly.

THAT would be a prize winning shot.

[Mister Pita]

I'd make the experience that much more authentic by using a meterless scale-focus camera and guestimating absolutely everything. I'd even block off the viewfinder so I can't compose properly.

THAT would be a prize winning shot.

No offense, but wouldn't that be cheating? It'd be too much like using a pinhole or box camera, which would practically guarantee the winner's results if combined with a tripwire. If you tape off the viewfinder, how do you know for sure that your subject isn't accidentally centered, and then where would you be? Don't ignore it - misuse it. That's why I suggested the Jim Beam, as that allows full use of the viewfinder and yet you can still get that "so fast I almost didn't get it" snapshot, and this works even if the subject isn't actually moving.

You should be using a modern camera and be learning how to override or disable every single system designed to improve the results. Overriding a few makes it more creative or expressive, but maladjusting everything at once gives you a crack at that "photographer with hiccups in a cave" look.

I think it's intended to be a learning-based skill thing to prove that you can win these things, and using something like a 1930's Ansco scale-focus, well, that just about handles it all for you, doesn't it? There's almost nothing to set wrong or disable. Where's the talent there? If all you have to do is just point and shoot to get those cheetah results, that just has to be cheating, sorry. I'll bet the winner spent an hour beforehand diving through menus on a DSLR and using all the dedicated buttons to circumvent things, then double-checking everything again. Talk about pressure, wow!

Anyway, I forgot - don't forget to turn off shake reduction, too. And be sure to post here if you locate another big contest we can enter, preferably international.

[FHPhotographer]

It's more abstract, has a mood and and breaks some rules. Something the judges found interesting, I suppose, because everyone can take a clean, sharp, well exposed picture today because the camera does it all for you. You just have to buck-up and practice. Sometimes pictures are judged on creativeness as apposed to technical excellence.

Have to agree here with tuco and others. There is an esthetic at work that is very different than mine, one in which the impression seems more important than the image itself.
For example, I've always wondered why the hell people get all soft and gooey over Cartier-Bresson. I look at shots like his "Cross Section of American Youth" with the lamp post growing out the kid's head and the clutter... I don't get it, but a lot of others do.
Odd, but there you have it, that's what makes this so much fun,
Brian