SA
Bluelight Crew
The old thread has been closed in favour of a new, clean start.
Advance note: strictly for the sake of making things simple, I will use "art" and photography" as two separate terms. Please do not take this the wrong way. I fully appreciate all forms of art and photography is, in my opinion, a form of art. I separate the two here only to simplify things and make for shorter paragraphs. Otherwise, this would stretch out over 15 pages.
Now that most have had a chance to digest the general sentiments with regards to the batch of new arts contests, I believe it's time to take another shot at determining what shall be and what shan't.
"We already have..."
First off, let me quickly address that frequently used statement, "But there's already a photo contest", as used with respect to photoshopped photographs. To that, I ask that you please revisit the rules of the original photo contest and note in particular the following part: "editing should be restricted to cropping and resizing". I hope that takes care of that once and for all and people will no longer use "there's already a photo contest, so that entry should go there" as an argument.
"The more things change..."
Next up - uniformity. As in 'across all contests'. This is an excellent point which was first brought up by TheLoveBandit. If we are going to have multiple contests running simultaneously, it would make for a much more orderly board if all of the contests shared:
- the same thread title format
- similar running times (more on this later)
- similar rules. Here, I believe the rules should be identical for the most part, save for a change or two to better suit the native medium(s)
Getting back to contest duration times, here are my thoughts. When I said they should have similar running times, I ment more the rotation rather than the duration, or the start and end days rather than total running times. Different contests focusing on different mediums will require different running times, in my opinion. In the straight forward photo contest, a theme can be announced one day and ten contestants can have a brand new photo ready the next day. The time from "Start" to idea to point and shoot to submission is often easily much shorter than that from "Start" to idea to creation to submission in some of the other arts mediums. With that, I don't mean to take away from the skill level involved in the photo contest or place undue burden on the arts contest. Many photo captures take dozens, sometimes hundreds of shots to capture that perfect one. That sunset one, for instance took me over forty. Likewise, some art can be created on demand in an hour, others take days, weeks, even months. It is my contention, however, that on average, art takes much longer to create than a photograph. In that light, I believe that the total running time for arts contests should be revised to something (much) longer than one week. That would, in my opinion, give our resident artists more time to put new ideas to medium rather than having to rely on older works from "the files" due to lack of time.
Regardless of the overall duration of each individual contest series, having all of the different series begin and end at the same or similar times would at least help keep some order on the board and more than likely increase participation as that was one of the top requests in the photo contest.
"Oh look, another one"
Time to address the creation of new contests. As much as I'd love to see a contest for every great idea that our members and artists have, I have to submit that first, logistically it could be quite challenging and second, having as many contests to satisfy all the mediums may not be warranted at this time.
The suggestion is that all new contest ideas, from here on in, must be submitted for staff and public review and approval. There would be a contest submission thread in which people wishing to create (and be responsible for running) a new contest would post their ideas in detail. Others would then add their input and, if the idea has merit, demand and commitment, it would be reviewed and accepted by the forum staff. I hope people don't see this as a road block, but rather as a road bump, allowing them enough pause to think things through better, see the road ahead of them clearer, readjust their speed and navigation as needed and see how many of the people on the sidewalk want to come along for the ride.
"Oh what fun..."
I believe we should touch on the subject of fun as it relates to these contests. Yes, one of the overall aims of these contests is for us to have fun. In my opinion, we should go about deriving that fun from submissions which we genuinely and, more importantly, honestly feel as being acceptable and in line with the other genuine entries. I know that it can be (successfully) argued until we're blue in the face that mspaint penis and boob drawings are indeed technically art and are within the constraints of a given contest round. Yes, we'll get a few laughs out of these types of entries. However, are we being honest with ourselves in those arguments? Are we showing the other, more serious submissions the respect due? If we're going to agree to dilute the contests with these types of humorous submissions alongside the more serious (and in my opinion more genuine) submissions, it is my opinion that the contests will, over time, lose overall value and individual calibre of entries. We face the real possibility of having the funnies overrun the "genuine" and, in the end, we may lose the original contests as they were meant to be, as serious contestants may shy away from participating in all the fun-o-rama altogether. I believe we should limit the discussed types of entries to either an mspaint/draw/doodle round of an existing contest or create an altogether separate contest for them (following the contest submission process).
"So where do they go?"
Last, but most certainly not least, we should address the issue of digitally altered photographs and how we came to be where we came to be. I believe that most of the latest "excitement" was caused by a poorly labelled contest. Rather than be called simply "2-D Art", it should have been more accurately worded to reflect the type of "classical" art the OP wished the contest to encompass. If that particular contest series does indeed follow such a revised, better labelled direction, then I don't necessarily see anything wrong with digitally altered photography being excluded... and channelled into the "Digital Art" contest. Provided the rules there are fine tuned to reflect the uniformity of all contests, I personally think that the masters of serious digital photography editing would kick serious ass in that contest series.
That's about it for now. I'd like to again thank TLB for offering some ideas I was able to pawn off as my own.
Let's add any thoughts in a constructive manner, please.
Advance note: strictly for the sake of making things simple, I will use "art" and photography" as two separate terms. Please do not take this the wrong way. I fully appreciate all forms of art and photography is, in my opinion, a form of art. I separate the two here only to simplify things and make for shorter paragraphs. Otherwise, this would stretch out over 15 pages.
Now that most have had a chance to digest the general sentiments with regards to the batch of new arts contests, I believe it's time to take another shot at determining what shall be and what shan't.
"We already have..."
First off, let me quickly address that frequently used statement, "But there's already a photo contest", as used with respect to photoshopped photographs. To that, I ask that you please revisit the rules of the original photo contest and note in particular the following part: "editing should be restricted to cropping and resizing". I hope that takes care of that once and for all and people will no longer use "there's already a photo contest, so that entry should go there" as an argument.
"The more things change..."
Next up - uniformity. As in 'across all contests'. This is an excellent point which was first brought up by TheLoveBandit. If we are going to have multiple contests running simultaneously, it would make for a much more orderly board if all of the contests shared:
- the same thread title format
- similar running times (more on this later)
- similar rules. Here, I believe the rules should be identical for the most part, save for a change or two to better suit the native medium(s)
Getting back to contest duration times, here are my thoughts. When I said they should have similar running times, I ment more the rotation rather than the duration, or the start and end days rather than total running times. Different contests focusing on different mediums will require different running times, in my opinion. In the straight forward photo contest, a theme can be announced one day and ten contestants can have a brand new photo ready the next day. The time from "Start" to idea to point and shoot to submission is often easily much shorter than that from "Start" to idea to creation to submission in some of the other arts mediums. With that, I don't mean to take away from the skill level involved in the photo contest or place undue burden on the arts contest. Many photo captures take dozens, sometimes hundreds of shots to capture that perfect one. That sunset one, for instance took me over forty. Likewise, some art can be created on demand in an hour, others take days, weeks, even months. It is my contention, however, that on average, art takes much longer to create than a photograph. In that light, I believe that the total running time for arts contests should be revised to something (much) longer than one week. That would, in my opinion, give our resident artists more time to put new ideas to medium rather than having to rely on older works from "the files" due to lack of time.
Regardless of the overall duration of each individual contest series, having all of the different series begin and end at the same or similar times would at least help keep some order on the board and more than likely increase participation as that was one of the top requests in the photo contest.
"Oh look, another one"
Time to address the creation of new contests. As much as I'd love to see a contest for every great idea that our members and artists have, I have to submit that first, logistically it could be quite challenging and second, having as many contests to satisfy all the mediums may not be warranted at this time.
The suggestion is that all new contest ideas, from here on in, must be submitted for staff and public review and approval. There would be a contest submission thread in which people wishing to create (and be responsible for running) a new contest would post their ideas in detail. Others would then add their input and, if the idea has merit, demand and commitment, it would be reviewed and accepted by the forum staff. I hope people don't see this as a road block, but rather as a road bump, allowing them enough pause to think things through better, see the road ahead of them clearer, readjust their speed and navigation as needed and see how many of the people on the sidewalk want to come along for the ride.
"Oh what fun..."
I believe we should touch on the subject of fun as it relates to these contests. Yes, one of the overall aims of these contests is for us to have fun. In my opinion, we should go about deriving that fun from submissions which we genuinely and, more importantly, honestly feel as being acceptable and in line with the other genuine entries. I know that it can be (successfully) argued until we're blue in the face that mspaint penis and boob drawings are indeed technically art and are within the constraints of a given contest round. Yes, we'll get a few laughs out of these types of entries. However, are we being honest with ourselves in those arguments? Are we showing the other, more serious submissions the respect due? If we're going to agree to dilute the contests with these types of humorous submissions alongside the more serious (and in my opinion more genuine) submissions, it is my opinion that the contests will, over time, lose overall value and individual calibre of entries. We face the real possibility of having the funnies overrun the "genuine" and, in the end, we may lose the original contests as they were meant to be, as serious contestants may shy away from participating in all the fun-o-rama altogether. I believe we should limit the discussed types of entries to either an mspaint/draw/doodle round of an existing contest or create an altogether separate contest for them (following the contest submission process).
"So where do they go?"
Last, but most certainly not least, we should address the issue of digitally altered photographs and how we came to be where we came to be. I believe that most of the latest "excitement" was caused by a poorly labelled contest. Rather than be called simply "2-D Art", it should have been more accurately worded to reflect the type of "classical" art the OP wished the contest to encompass. If that particular contest series does indeed follow such a revised, better labelled direction, then I don't necessarily see anything wrong with digitally altered photography being excluded... and channelled into the "Digital Art" contest. Provided the rules there are fine tuned to reflect the uniformity of all contests, I personally think that the masters of serious digital photography editing would kick serious ass in that contest series.
That's about it for now. I'd like to again thank TLB for offering some ideas I was able to pawn off as my own.
Let's add any thoughts in a constructive manner, please.
