DMBLGIT: We have a winner!

Well! After 45 spectacular entries and a group of five excellent judges (A La Cuisine, Spiceblog, EatStuff, Seven Spoons and Moi) we have arrived at a final score for each participant. Each participant was assigned a scor out of 50 for each category and a total score of out of 150, with each of the judges assigning a score out of 10 points for each of three categories (eatability, aesthetics and originality)

Without further ado....

The overall winner is: Chubby Hubby with 123 (E41, A37, O45) Points out of 150. Chubby Hubby also came out with the highest Aesthetics score of 45 out of 50 points.

The winner for Eatability is: Delicious Life with 44 out of 50 points

The winner for Originality is: Kuidaore with 38 out of a possible 50 points

Congrats to all you winners out there & thanks to Ronald of Love Sicily for the opportunity to host this event.

Good luck to Andrew, who is hosting next months DMBLGIT?

Spicey emailed me a treatise expounding on his judging technique in which he made some excellent points about food photography in general, with all of which I agree, and which I have posted below for reference.

"My favourite was by the photograph by Brandon Eats. It could be bias on my part but I think it's really hard to take a good picture of freshly cooked meat and it's been nailed here. While other foods can be photographed at leisure, there's a limited time opportunity to meat and it's been done here. The juices are still very much alive and the onions still seem to be in the process of caramelising. It's a moment of beauty caught fleetingly with great dynamism in a static shot.
Nicely framed too, with every bit of superfluity chopped away. I'd mention some more worthies but I'm crap at drawing the line so I'd be here all day. You know who you are.

Looking through the photographs, I felt a few things could have been done to have cadged a few extra points.

Cropping - unless the same thing repeated creates a certain effect like a row, there's no need to show lots of something. There's also no need to show all of something and it's not a bad thing to lead a reader's imagine outside of the frame by just showing a part. I sometimes feel that every pixel is like a child, but we must be ruthless.

Composition - a pile of stuff is a pile of stuff, the brain needs order and balance.

Colour - a little nudge of the saturation bar brings a lot of warmth into a pic. Contrast can help make the distinction between colours clearer or soften them. Photoshop is not naughty - ok a heavy hand with the blur tool, yes, but I confess here to using it to mess around with the colours and stamping out plate splatters. Strong colours are great but then again people seem to dig the Impressionists.

Mise en Scene - These might be extras like a cloth underneath, utensils, including the ingredients or anything to create extra interest, or build a narrative. If you're going to photograph things apart from the food they may as well be attractive and interesting. I often see them as a nice way of sneaking in extra details about the creator (like credit cards for example) and it leaves you something to ponder after
the initial impact.

Thanks Lyn for the opportunity of being a judge and thank you all for your photographs. I'm off to look at mine and say a few mea culpas."

Comments

[Chubby Hubby]

Thanks Lyn (and the other judges), for picking me and hosting this month. Cheers!

[J]

hi lyn & all the other judges, thank you very much. cheers,j

[AugustusGloop]

Worthy winners indeed. The judges had a tough job I'm sure. It's been great to see everyone else's photos too--and discover a few new blogs myself!

Great job hosting Lex. Looking forward to the next one!

[I'm sad!]

A professional photographer is chosen as the winner? Very dicouraging ;(

[Kelly]

Congratulations to all the winners! Your photos are beautiful. I'm inspired!

[anthony]

Cheer up saddy, think of it as a chance to mix it with the pros.

[William]

Are you going to post scores for all the participants? I could use the feedback...

[Chubby Hubby]

Hi I'm Sad,

I'm sorry you feel that way. Let me clarify a couple things though. My full-time job is not a photographer (sadly, I'm a really boring civil servant). Over the past 3 years, I've only accepted 2 big commercial photography jobs--one was to shoot pix for a book my wife was writing and the other was to shoot some food for some stamps. While I love cameras and photography, aside from a summer job when I was 16, in which I worked as a darkroom assistant for a local newspaper, I pretty much picked up what I know from playing with my camera and asking other photographers for advice; I never took formal courses or anything. I was lucky though. Working as a journalist (which I did from 1996 to 2002) meant that I could occasionally shoot pix while on assignments. So while some of those pix were published, I was always more of a writer or editor than photographer. And I'm know my really professional photographer friends would hardly consider me competition, especially since I don't seek out work and 99% of what I shoot these days is for my own pleasure and amusement. Anyway, no hard feelings. All the very best!

[McAuliflower]

I love the winning photo (yea CH!). I found myself being drawn to this picture over and over. It's an amazing photo and amazing potsticker skills to boot (just check out those pleats!).

[Lyn]

Mr. I'm Sad,

It's unfortunate that you're sad. This event is actually a lot of fun and I think most of us view it as a learning experience and a forum to share ideas and improve our own photography, rather than as a photographic olympics.

kind regards