Seriously, this is about telling a STORY IN 6 WORDS.. If your words are meaningless outside of the picture's context, or if your words don't tell a story - then... BOOM 5. (and I very seriously considered making them all 3's)..
Really folks, most of these were haiku at best, trash at worst, there was even one that made me want to pay for a remedial English course for someone.
The given example was "Baby shoes for sale, never worn" - an awesome example to be sure - it tells a deep and emotional story that compels one to imagine many details that were not given. Surprisingly, even most of the examples given @ //www.smithmag.net/sixwords/ are pretty much crap. Too many tell the entire shallow story.. Disappointing.
To be fair, I did give out a couple of high scores, one to a rather mediocre image, but they NAILED the topic, hitting just the right blend of emotion, depth and spurring of the imagination.
As a final note: My apologies to those who took excellent photos and yet were still given a crappy score by me, your images deserved much better.
Kudos for having the cajones to post that when I didn't. I did lower a few votes myself once I gave it some serious thought. Many entries seemed to be freestudy shots that simply had a 6 word title applied and didn't seem to convey any story or message to me. I lowered some wonderful photos to 5's. It's not often my average cast for a challenge is under a 6. It was 5.8 for this one, but that's still on the generous side, relatively speaking.
I tried (and failed) at commenting on all of them, but I split my score into 2 votes and averaged them together: photo quality + narrative quality. I enjoyed going through this and voting, even if many of them didn't seem "memoir" ish. Photography as an illustration or entryway into a story is quite interesting, although I do agree that quite a bit felt arbitrarily related, or a free study with a 6 word title.
I guess I didn't come into this with such a narrow definition of the challenge. I figure if the title tells a story it fits the challenge. It doesn't have to convey any deep meaning just "tell a story" thats it. However, I do agree that there were quite a few images that just had a six word title and did not tell any story.
I guess I didn't come into this with such a narrow definition of the challenge. I figure if the title tells a story it fits the challenge. It doesn't have to convey any deep meaning just "tell a story" thats it. However, I do agree that there were quite a few images that just had a six word title and did not tell any story.
Which is why I handed out 5's instead of 3's...
I just found the whole thing a little disappointing, as I was looking forward to some really wonderful stuff from all the great talent around here. Again, several people did really nail it though, and that was a treat!
As for the "narrow" interpretation? I'm usually prone to that, but then again, I don't think your should be substituted for you're and I REALLY hate the term interwebs... Guess I'm not much of an interpretation guy, I do typically see things in life as very much a continuum of right/wrong good/bad etc.. With lots of gray in each zone - but here? Screw the gray, I want to see people NAIL the topic.
ETA: I expect that I'll have a few spasms of angst when I see the results.
Turns out our definition of what fits the challenge is more similar that different. Many of my favorites didn't even make top 10 or even near to it. But there were a few that I was glad to see made it in there.
Turns out our definition of what fits the challenge is more similar that different. Many of my favorites didn't even make top 10 or even near to it. But there were a few that I was glad to see made it in there.
This is why we have anonymous voting. Not that mine was terribly anonymous, but I couldn't do anything about that sign in the background except choose a different shot.
LOL, funny you should mention that... There were a couple in that challenge I liked.... And one in a current challenge that I'm quite fond of as well (simply because they actually called a rock by it's correct name, then again, I'm suspicious that they just got lucky...)
