It might be inevitable that this image has come to exist on DPC. I am glad it was conceived and presented legitimately. The author is believable, sincere and honest about the work.
Appearing in Team Sports Action is appropriate. The field of play is blindingly evident - and really the only tangeble subject matter provided. It is enough to show. I am surprised It meets the challenge criteria in such a elementary, efficient and powerful way.
The beauty of the image is in the concept. It is site specific and cannot live any where else. Trivial or a novelty - maybe. It provides a thoughtful aesthetic in a sophisticated graphic format - the field. Presented with but one colour the exploded field fills & spills, ultimately flattens and becomes essentially invisible. Like the mythic angel Gabriel - unreal and invisible but present. I like this image, I accept it and welcome it.
This is roughly something I posted elsewere about this image.
Personally I was one who gave it a 10. For me it was the most enjoyable and thought provoking image in the challenge, far better than a lot of the frankly not so great 'obvious' sports shots.
It reminded me of a lot of the Suprematism work of Kasimir Malevich, famous for his black squares on a white canvas and other such derided 'nonsense'. Yes it looks like a joke. But there is a serious meaning worth studying behind his images and I found something similar in this grey square.
DPChallenge is a team sport - people easily identify with their own team - Canon, Nikon etc. The forums are often full of this. The carefully matched grey square to the background brought this forward in my mind, along with the title of 'challenge' The simple bounding box between the image and the site demarked the space and all in all, this shot gave me a whole lot more to think about than any other. So the picture represents team sport, and also action, given that it is part of a live challenge.
The fact that you may or may not have entered it with any of this context doesn't matter either. We don't get to know intent or see details while voting. The entire field of deconstructionism is all about any viewer having at least as valid an interpretation of a work as the creator has, and in this case, my interpretation was worth a 10. It was by far and away the one shot I looked at for the longest time. It was certainly the best in my opinion. It is entirely in topic. It was the most enjoyable, stimulating and thought provoking image in this challenge, for me.
a random black rectangle with no thought would probably not have stimulated these ideas in my head - this more carefully constructed entry did.
Posted this in the forums; think I'll leave a copy here too.
"Having looked through the votes and comments now, I think the complainers are wrong. As a shot of it's type, 'competition' is very very effectively done. Think of this: it isn't a standard 4x3 aspect ratio; the grey has been perfectly matched to the site background; it is a photograph of nothing - rather than any old shot darkened completely and then lightened to the right shade. It shows imagination, thought, and care in execution.
It deals with ideas and concepts that are almost completely out of place here - and a challenge is the only sensible way to display it on the site. Had it been put into a portfolio and a thread linked to it I think it could only have struggled to 100 views or so - as of right now it has 1400 or so.
I can't believe that those who commented along the lines of 'stop wasting my time' actually spent any time at all thinking about it - whilst it was obviously going to be voted down massively, there is certainly more to it than the Burt Reynolds blank black 4x3 shot. Intellectually, the ideas it provokes may hold little interest for a vast majority of this site's competitors, but there is equally no need for an outright dismissal of the thought and ideas behind the shot.
I can absolutely agree with any vote it recieved - all the way through the range, from leaving room in one's own scale for other shots to rank above it, to acknowledgment of a little intrigue, to outright dislike, and the sliding scale in between. Interesting to note that it recieved at least one vote at each score.
No, this was not a "performance" or anything similar (but now that you pointed it out, I think that this empty frame could really represent the competition happening here for all of us).
I wanted to know how you would react to this apparently missing picture, and the good thing is that I learned something.
Some of the comments (before photo validation, after the "impact" was quite different) are really imaginatives.
Some people are able to describe a scene, although there is nothing in this photo.
This makes me think that perhaps photographers should have a strong imagination. This is a new thing to improve for me.
So on the list of things that could make a good photographer, we have:
*good technical ability
*ability to compose scene
*ability to "see" things
and now we also have:
*strong imagination (ability to compose shoots before seeing them?)
I was just thinking i haven`t given out a 1 vote for so long and then along comes this. lol
I can only guess your going for the most comments on a photo record.
for quite some time its been telling me "This photo has been validated, and is not missing or an error." but as a result i cant view your photo or pass a result on it.... :( sry bout that
A better idea than photograph. If your intention is to refer to DPC as a team sport then you would have been better giving us more of a clue than the background colour of the page. If that wasn't your intention then I don't get it. 1 floyd
Oh cool.... a DPChallenge "uniform....... " fits the challenge idea in a abstract way. The idea has cropped up in the forums some where in the past... but never has been submitted that I have seen.
i remember that game, played in the fog...i can't remember who one, but i do know the won the trophy, got the brown ribbon, and almost set the record for lowest score...
Ok I think I get the point. :) Aint you refering to that all the dpc'ers are one team and now they are competing to and strugling to wote this "picture"? Love the collor though! :)
A little bit overexposed, and the girl in the back kissing the guy, is a bit distracting.
I like how they run and how the guy's are chasing the ball.
Think this will go for the blue ribbon. (10)
edit for bad language, 10 still stands! One of the best of these kind of shots I've seen. (have one in my portfolio too)
I read (above) that this has been validated, not missing and not an error, in which case I'm totally bemused - and amused! You've entitled the photo as 'competition'..hmmm.. even more thought provoking! Which some pieces of 'art' deliberately attempt to be - you've achieved that, certainly. According to the site rules though, I'm supposed to give consideration to the picture meeting the challenge - as there doesn't seem to be a specific image to vote on I decided against scoring a vote. Really looking forward to reading any reason/explanation on this one! lol
Ok, got your point. Nice idea.
I don't like it though, and I don't think it actualy represent a team sport action, since none of us here at DPC run as a team...
I gave you a 4 just for the idea...
Great image. Love all the action, detail and colours. Sharpest image I have ever seen. Definitely a master of NeatImage. That's so smooth & clean. Excellent.
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