Summer 2014 Competition

[Pete Eeles]

To enter the competition, please post a single image taken in 2014 Between 1st June and 1st October (1 post per member) as follows:

- Click on the "Gallery" link and then open the "Summer 2014" album (gallery/album.php?album_id=2386)
- Click the "NEW IMAGE" button
- Follow the instructions to upload a single image

To view the entries:

- Click on the "Gallery" link and then open the "Summer 2013" album (gallery/album.php?album_id=2386)

To edit or delete your entry, which you can do until 5th October:

- Select the "Moderate" link at the bottom of the image details
- Take the appropriate action

Please note that the entries are not anonymous when posted (they will be visible to all visitors), and that the judging will be conducted by a panel.

Look forward to seeing the entries roll in, and good luck!

Regards Gruditch and Pete

[Pete Eeles]

Please remember that the comp. closes on 5th!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Pete Eeles]

As usual, no unanimous agreement on the top 5, but after systematic scoring, we have:

1st - Adonis Blue - Nigel Kiteley
2nd - Marbled White - Trev Sawyer
3rd - Southern Small White - Simon2
4th - Adonis Blue - Neil Hulme
5th - Female Silver-studded Blue - FishiEE

Congrats to the winners and thanks to all who entered!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Trev Sawyer]

Ooh! - That’s a bit of a result…

To be up there alongside the likes of those pesky Kitely, Kipper and FishiEE triplets is a real feather in the cap for me and I’m well chuffed! Well done to “Simon2” also – a great shot of the Southern Small White.

For the record, my favourite shot was Neil’s Adonis Blue (how did that only make 4th!?).. . The angled half-open wing pose, somehow managing to keep every scale on the butterfly in focus but the background out and (especially) that gorgeous colour! So accurate and truly beautiful!
Well done to all.

Trev

[Tony Moore]

Well done everyone - some stunning shots.

I have absolutely no reservations about the current judging method, which is scrupulously fair and works very well, but I wonder what would have happened if each entrant (all of whom, by definition, must be interested in both butterflies and photography) were to submit a 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice - excluding their own photograph, and the winners extrapolated from the results. This would also allow the present judges to enter the fun of the competition. I would have voted for Trev, Neil and Adrian in that order. I agree with Trev about Neil's shot - a quite wonderful position of the subject and terrific DOF ( I imagine it was taken with that dinky little camera that I have seen him using )

Tony M.

[The Annoying Czech]

For the record, my favourite shot was Neil’s Adonis Blue (how did that only make 4th!?

That could be caused by bad light and especially bad iso (although the butterfly itself is OK). Adrian Kennerley's Adonis Blue has exaggerated PP and worst composition, but looks better in my eyes, since I consider light (together with bokeh) to be #1 difference maker (and many contributed photos are indeed very gloomy). Adrian's animal is also more interesting, not mentioning the whole scene is nicely colourful.

I generally recommend people to buy or download some free iso (noise) killer, like Noise Ninja or Neat Image plugin for PS. Either noise killer or tripod together with "noise killing" already via camera body settings.

Congratulations to the winners, and I'm still intending to compete with lens not younger than 1970 in Spring and Summer competitions

[FISHiEE]

Well done everyone - some stunning shots.

I have absolutely no reservations about the current judging method, which is scrupulously fair and works very well, but I wonder what would have happened if each entrant (all of whom, by definition, must be interested in both butterflies and photography) were to submit a 1st, 2nd, 3rd choice - excluding their own photograph, and the winners extrapolated from the results. This would also allow the present judges to enter the fun of the competition. I would have voted for Trev, Neil and Adrian in that order. I agree with Trev about Neil's shot - a quite wonderful position of the subject and terrific DOF ( I imagine it was taken with that dinky little camera that I have seen him using )

Tony M.

The competitions were previously run on a similar basis to this, but it resulted in lots of bitching and moaning about the voting so best not to go there again!

[FISHiEE]

Congratulations to the winners. Once again a very fine selection! I thought it was going to be between Neil, Nigel and Trev when I saw the final selection.

I had a shot quite similar to Trev's I had originally planned to upload, but thought I'd steer clear and go for something different after I spotted his backlit Marbled White!

[Neil Hulme]

Hi Marek,

I'm not sure you're looking at the right image. At A3 print off almost every scale and hair across all four wings is razor sharp, with only a hint of softening in the extreme rear corners of the hind-wings (individual scales still visible). The background is smooth as a baby's bottom at A3, so I certainly wouldn't use any noise reduction software on it (if I knew how to do so). If you are looking at the right image, maybe you can see something which results from this being a low res compressed image, but I don't know enough techy stuff to understand what happens when you reduce images for internet display (I just reduce the dimensions and sharpen a little more than I would do for the full sized version).

The performance of bridge cameras does indeed drop off quickly in bad light. My image was taken in full-on sunshine and I'm seeing the very vibrant colours of a freshly emerged adult.

Adrian's excellent (it would have made my top four) image is of a very blue, female Common Blue.

BWs, Neil

[Tony Moore]

The competitions were previously run on a similar basis to this, but it resulted in lots of bitching and moaning about the voting so best not to go there again!

,

I was absolutely not suggesting a change in the status quo, which works fine. I just thought it might be an interesting exercise to try as a one off, just to see what would happen. (There are no bloody butterflies in Staffordshire atm and I'm a bit bored )
The big problem with the last voting system was that people could vote for themselves and coerce others into voting for them, although what satisfaction anyone could get from such chicanery is beyond me. It was only a thought

T.

[Neil Hulme]

Congratulations, not only to the winners, but all those who entered. The standard is always so high that picking winners must be a nightmare.

Of course judgement is always going to reflect personal preferences, and the judges are seldom going to find that everyone is in agreement with their decisions. We should be grateful that they're prepared to put their necks on the line!

For me, it was Trev Sawyer's beautifully lit Marbled White by a nose, with FISHiEE and Adrian Kennerley neck-and-neck. I shamelessly put myself in the top four, which is where I ended up . There were several others 'thereabouts', and not a bad image amongst the lot. As always, thanks to the judges for adjudicating, and to those who have made complimentary comments, including Marek, even though he's been Annoying .

BWs, Neil

[David M]

The Kipper by a whisker IMHO.

The colour is just so striking.

Excellent efforts by all once again but why is it Lycaenids always seem to dominate?

[Jack Harrison]

The winners have certainly produced fine specimen shots as indeed have all the entries. But they are in most cases just that: specimens as in the old sense of collected pinned butterflies. Beautifully diffuse backgrounds that enable the viewer to concentrate on the insect. However, with the exception of only one or two entries, the photos tell us next-to-nothing about the behaviour, habitat – even the size of the butterfly. I note that unfortunately one of the regular contributors to ukb didn’t enter. Guy's photos tell us where the butterfly lives and what it does, not just what it looks like.

The competition showed us perfect pictures of butterflies but little else.

Jack

[Padfield]

The winners have certainly produced fine specimen shots as indeed have all the entries. But they are in most cases just that: specimens as in the old sense of collected pinned butterflies. Beautifully diffuse backgrounds that enable the viewer to concentrate on the insect. However, with the exception of only one or two entries, the photos tell us next-to-nothing about the behaviour, habitat – even the size of the butterfly. I note that unfortunately one of the regular contributors to ukb didn’t enter. Guy's photos tell us where the butterfly lives and what it does, not just what it looks like.

The competition showed us perfect pictures of butterflies but little else.

Jack

I'm glad you enjoy (some of) my pictures, Jack. To be fair, I don't enter the competitions at least partly because it says 'administrator' next to my name and I don't want the slightest whiff of corruption to taint the perfumed and exceptionally good-natured atmosphere of UK Butterflies ... There's also the fact I'm not a very good photographer and use an extremely cheap camera! That said, I do share your perplexity that the great photographers in our community (I mean that completely sincerely, with great respect) concentrate all their efforts on a particular kind of photo, that isolates the butterfly from its environment. Probably, enough said, as we've done this one before (!) - but it would be nice to see some carefully composed portraits of whole butterflies, by which I mean their context - their world - the objects that matter to them or threaten them - their (biological) hopes and aspirations. On the whole, it is the less competent photographers like myself, working with cheaper cameras, who try to achieve this.

Perhaps as well as a photo competition a butterfly portrait competition could be organised, in which rather than be limited to a single, unmanipulated shot, we could use whatever media or software we wanted to compose a picture that really captured the smell and character of a butterfly. Just a thought.

My congratulations too to the winners - they are superb photos.

Guy

[David M]

There's also the fact I'm not a very good photographer and use an extremely cheap camera!

Au contraire, Guy, your images are easily the most atmospheric on this website.

Of course, as you infer, your photographs won't win any of these awards, because the judges have a shared pre-conceived notion of what constitutes an ideal butterfly image, i.e. smooth background which isolates the butterfly, with huge amounts of artificial 'air-brushing' to enhance the 'sharp' from the 'blurred'.

I'm not being critical of this rationale, because I am equally as impresssed by such juxtapositions of subject and background as most others. However, I am a creature of the field, which means that I particularly appreciate a sense of perspective and subliminal narrative in the images I view, and yours tick those boxes better than any others on here.

I guess it's a bit like Crufts in the sense that those who adjudicate the winners are all looking for the same perfect stereotype that best conforms to the accepted criteria.

I suppose it'd be nice to have a competition entitled 'Butterflies in their environment', as that would, by definition, preclude the kind of images that sweep the board each and every time.

[Pete Eeles]

... the judges have a shared pre-conceived notion of what constitutes an ideal butterfly image.

And, as it happens, they're not the same (and my criteria are not the same as those you listed since I like to see something that captures the atmosphere, something different, etc. etc. - not just technically well-executed) - which is probably a good thing - and the reason why the judges hardly ever agree on the top 3! In fact, I'm pretty sure we never have!

Cheers,

- Pete

[Pete Eeles]

Perhaps as well as a photo competition a butterfly portrait competition could be organised, in which rather than be limited to a single, unmanipulated shot, we could use whatever media or software we wanted to compose a picture that really captured the smell and character of a butterfly. Just a thought.

I really like the sound of that - I'd be very interested in the creativity of this community since it could well inform how we choose to present (for example) the species descriptions in future. For example, I've never seen anything that captures the gliding flight of a White Admiral - in video or otherwise.

Cheers,

- Pete

[Butterflysaurus rex]

Great selection of images, congratulations to the winners, I love looking at all of your lovely photos.

Best

B'saurus

[David M]

And, as it happens, they're not the same (and my criteria are not the same as those you listed since I like to see something that captures the atmosphere, something different, etc. etc. - not just technically well-executed) - which is probably a good thing - and the reason why the judges hardly ever agree on the top 3! In fact, I'm pretty sure we never have!

I'm not disputing that the judges differ when it comes to the minutiae, but the hard fact is that the same general type of shot usually takes the prize.

I'm perfectly happy to be made a fool of - just publish the last half dozen competition winning photos in a single post and let the membership see for themselves what is considered a winning image.

[FISHiEE]

smooth background which isolates the butterfly, with huge amounts of artificial 'air-brushing' to enhance the 'sharp' from the 'blurred'.

I think that in pretty much all cases the effect is a natural result of the lens/camera bring used correctly to achieve this rather than something that has been 'created' in photoshop.