Taunton Flower Show - Day 1

Ambassadors of morning
Originally uploaded by Nostromoo

I'm rather indignant today. I entered 8 images into the Taunton Flower show and only one, this one, had anything said about it, and that was highly commended. I suppose I should be pleased with that, being my first attempt and all. And I'm certainly don't mind losing out to better pcitures. But some of the judging was farcical. Some winning images clearly were better, some better images were similarly ignored, and some of the winners were just wrong.

The winner in the "legs" category for example wasn't even the correct size. Don't get me wrong, it was a really nice image but the rules clearly stated the image should be 8x6 inches and that image wasn't. I didn't realise rules were optional. The second or third placed image was a lady wearing read shoes. Nice composure but frankly hideous lighting, her legs where almost completely blown out by what looked like an overpowered on camera flash, and there were awful shadows on the background. Even the judge called it a cliché.

"Feathered friends" were all birds images except mine. Mine was completely ignored in favour of a picture of a pair of ducklings and a couple of pigeons or something similar. I wish now I'd trawlled my image archive for some more obvious images. I must have a hundred pictures of ducklings.

The image posted here of the River Tone lost out to a picture of French Weir. I have to admit it was an interesting angle, but it wasn't that good. I can't remember the other images I was so inspired by them.

One of the other winning images, although an interesting composition, appeared to have been printed on toilet paper with a inkjet printer. So much for spending £20 having mine printed by Peak.

I realise it's only a provincial flower show, but had I understood the categories were to be taken litterally, image quality didn't matter so I should just have my images printed at Tescos, rules on image sizes were optional, perhaps I would have entered different images.