CCC Forum

A rose from the bunch of flowers which my wife received for Mother's Day. I mainly eschew straight flower shots these days and this image started out as an infrared capture.

Well, it is official. This image is on Flickr and it has just become my most faved image there in less than 24 hours since posting And the scale of this great triumph? A modest 17 at the time of writing. To put that in context, I do not promote my photography on social media and I have no desire to chase likes. So it was a pleasant surprise to see some higher figures than usual when I looked.

The views and faves for this image continue to grow, in a modest way. I had expected it to be a 24 hour wonder and the world would move on. While it is a long way from going viral, it fascinates me that people are still finding it. How do they do that when there is so much other stuff out there and I have not gone out of my way to promote it? Why has this particular image been so, well popular is not really the right word, when others have fared less well? It is an intriguing experience.

To put this shot into perspective, I submitted the image below into the recent SPA Biennial Exhibition as a print, where it scored the grand total of 9 out of a possible 15. In all probability, each of the three judges gave it 3 which is the second lowest mark. When it comes to the higher end competitions and distinctions, depictions of flowers tend not to do very well. The judges have seen them all before. Even in work such as this where they have probably not seen too many examples, if any, to them it is still a flower shot. Without wishing to seem cynical, I suspect that in these instances judges look at the subject first and the aesthetics second. In their mitigation, I would point out that, unlike club competitions, the marking for the larger contests where there are a large number of submissions is done very quickly and each entry is viewed for just a few seconds.

Both images were shot with the same camera and lens, and at the same aperture. Processing was similar, but not identical. I will be printing and mounting the second shot as I like it, but as for putting it into a competition? That is a definite no no.