Photo-Based Art - - Photo art: Wins "Best in Show Award" for Photography at 2007 Clark County, WA fair

DannyRaphael · #1 08-13-2007, 06:13 AM

On my way home today from a visit with my mother who lives ~175 miles from where I live near Seattle, I stopped at the Clark County (Washington) Fair (about 30 miles North of Portland, Oregon) to check out the fine arts and photo exhibits. This is a HUGE fair with annual attendance in the tens of thousands.

http://www.clarkcofair.com/

In this fair "photo-art" is entered along with traditional photography. There is no distinction among film, digital or computer enhanced or manipulated. "If it starts out as a photo, it qualifies."

FYI: In the fair where I am entering my own photography and artwork (The Evergreen State Fair, http://www.evergreenfair.org/), photo-art is entered in the "fine arts" category and there's a separate classification for computer-created works.

Anyway, back to Clark County I was surprised by how few photo-art manipulations were entered. There were a couple not-well-done smudges and a couple that looked to have been done with Corel Painter. But the biggest surprise was a photo manipulation won the "Best of the Show" award, the highest honor presented.

It was a 16"x20" color print of a partly sunken old boat flush mounted (no mat or frame) on regular paper, not "canvas" or specialty paper of any kind. The effect was achieved by the popular Buzz simplifier plugin that renders such a unique effect. That's it. Real simple. Just Buzz.

Because it was the only "buzzed" entry, its uniqueness apparently stood out to the judges. In my opinion they held photographers to very high standards based on the relatively few entries that earned blue ribbons (top honors) among 300+ entries.

So "hurray" for photo-art. It continues to catch on in "the real world."

Steve Conway · #2 08-13-2007, 08:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by DannyRaphael

On my way home today from a visit with my mother who lives ~175 miles from where I live near Seattle, I stopped at the Clark County (Washington) Fair (about 30 miles North of Portland, Oregon) to check out the fine arts and photo exhibits. This is a HUGE fair with annual attendance in the tens of thousands.

http://www.clarkcofair.com/

In this fair "photo-art" is entered along with traditional photography. There is no distinction among film, digital or computer enhanced or manipulated. "If it starts out as a photo, it qualifies."

FYI: In the fair where I am entering my own photography and artwork (The Evergreen State Fair, http://www.evergreenfair.org/), photo-art is entered in the "fine arts" category and there's a separate classification for computer-created works.

Anyway, back to Clark County I was surprised by how few photo-art manipulations were entered. There were a couple not-well-done smudges and a couple that looked to have been done with Corel Painter. But the biggest surprise was a photo manipulation won the "Best of the Show" award, the highest honor presented.

It was a 16"x20" color print of a partly sunken old boat flush mounted (no mat or frame) on regular paper, not "canvas" or specialty paper of any kind. The effect was achieved by the popular Buzz simplifier plugin that renders such a unique effect. That's it. Real simple. Just Buzz.

Because it was the only "buzzed" entry, its uniqueness apparently stood out to the judges. In my opinion they held photographers to very high standards based on the relatively few entries that earned blue ribbons (top honors) among 300+ entries.

So "hurray" for photo-art. It continues to catch on in "the real world."

You didn't happen to take a photo of the winning entry did you? Would like to see it.

Steve C.

DannyRaphael · #3 08-13-2007, 09:14 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Steve Conway

You didn't happen to take a photo of the winning entry did you? Would like to see it.

Steve C.

No, it was not my entry... wish it had been. What an ego boost that would have been. There was some excellent photos that didn't get this level of recognition.

What struck me was the realization that it could not have taken more than about 15-20 minutes to craft the winning entry: A little prep work consisting of some color tweaking, cloning here and there, apply the Buzz plugin, crop, File > Save and it was off to the printer.