Simon Carter
A great range of really interesting shots! It's fantastic to see so many people getting out there, having fun climbing, and having a play with the camera. I first went through and scored the images on their merit in the following categories: technical, composition, originality/creativity, interest/action, and the effort that might have been involved (the originality and creativity bit is perhaps the most important, so I scored most generously for that). Many of the shots nailed it in one or two of these areas, but, in my hardened opinion, there was a relatively small number of shots that nailed it in all these different areas - that seems to be the really tricky bit. Extremely contrast light, or shooting in shade, seemed to kill some of the shots, in some of these situations more diffuse light might have been better (particularly when shooting close-up action). If the setting isn't naturally awesome, then some of the ones that seemed to work best was when different techniques were used. Silhouettes, creative focus techniques, and really "strong" compositions were all things that worked really well. The real standouts to me were the ones from The Healer in Tasmania, and the silhouette of Neil on Stepping on Snakes. It has been fun! Thanks everyone.
Glenn Tempest
The general standard of the photography is quite good. There are a handful of standout pics and the rest, while having excellent spontaneity, tend to suffer from compositional problems. It's not often that a climbing image is snapped off the cuff so it is up to the photographer to put considerable thought into which angle will produce the best (or most unusual) image. Bouldering pics especially require a bit of lateral thinking if the image is to be something special. Give some thought to the lighting which is of paramount importance. A few images also suffer from a lack of sharpness but this is a problem that occurs when transparencies are scanned (they need to be sharpened in a photo editing program such as Adobe Photoshop). The digitally generated images tend to have produced better colours and sharpness. Overall the competition has shown that there are plenty of good photographers out there and (judging by the variety of cliffs) that they are to be found right across the country.
Marten Blumen
The task of judging this competition was heaps of fun. Although there were some stand-out photos, for the vast majority I found it increasingly hard to rank one photo above or below another one. In saying all that I believe one simple way to improve the photos is to spend more time preparing the photo for digital display. A great photo can be let down many things such as dirt on the negative, low contrast scanning, milky and off-colour black levels. I personally would not accept a bad print from a mini-lab and it is the same in the digital world. Take it back, rescan and make it as good as it could be.
It is very important in photography to have an understanding of the way different light in the outdoors affects the image on film or CCD. A would be photographer with the newest, most expensive lens and a top of the line professional camera body is less likely to capture a great photo than someone who spent time learning to 'see' like film before pressing the shutter button. A person who understands outdoor lighting will wait for a cloud to move out of the way of the sun, so the quality of light is at its best, or disparately wait for a cloudy day to reduce high contrast shadows.
Although the classic climbing shot comes from abseiling down and pointing the camera from above and to the side of the climber, I have found shooting from the ground with different wide-angle and telephoto lenses, waiting for the action and then running about madly shooting, the most effective technique to capture that great moment. Photography is an art form and it's only when one masters the tools that you can be truly creative. Well done everyone and keep up the good work.
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