I SHOT IT Blog

Bird Photo Competition 6 2012

January 22nd, 2013

Congratulation to Christian Bernfeld who has won the last bird photo competition, with a stunning photo of swans. Christian won $558.00 plus Leica Trinovid 8 x 20 BCA Binoculars. Thank you to everyone who took part and made this possible. Our bird photo competition judge, Mike Atkinson, has updated the competition page with the winner and runners-up photos here:

Bird Photo Competition 6 2012

A new bird photo competition has started here:

Bird Photo Competition 1 2013

New File Uploader

January 18th, 2013

We've updated the Advanced Uploader page, with the lastest Flash software from Uploadify. The Advanced Uploader page is great when you want to select more than one file on your computer and watch the upload progress bar for each photo. Not only does this version look much better, we have configured it to report error messages. If you upload a photo that is too big or too small or if there was an error processing your photo a popup window will appear with a message. Before, only the Basic Uploader would report error messages. We hope that you will the improvement useful.

Dog Photo Competition 7 2012

January 15th, 2013

2013 is off to a good start with these wonderful dog photos. There's a good variety of shots, providing plenty of inspiration for how we can take photos of our 4 legged friends. Our dog photo competition judge, Illona has posted the results here:

Dog Photo Competition 7 2012

Congratulation to the winner who has won $529.20 and a Leica V-LUX 40 worth approximately $800. Thank you to everyone who took part and made this possible. This was also the first competition where all the runners-up received $10 to spend on more contests.

We've started a new dog photo competition which can be found here:

Dog Photo Competition 1 2013

Black-And-White Photo Competition 2 : From The Judges

January 12th, 2013

Black-And-White Photo Competition 2

It is our pleasure to announce the winner and a large number of images that we found deserved a Mark of Excellence.

As judges in I SHOT IT and occasionally other competitions, it is very often the same images judges are circling around in the judges heads as the winners. And in a way, when the results are announced, it is also often images most people will recognize as the winning photos. There is often a sort of recognition in the winning images. You think "Of course!" when you see which photo won.

For those who doesn't know, the I SHOT IT competition is judged by the judges individually in the first rounds. First we as judges make a shortlist, and then we shorten it down. So when we discuss the images the first time, we meet with each of our shortlist of images for winners and images that deserve a Mark of Excellence. Often we have more or less the same images on our lists. Though not in this case! And I shall return to how this was in a moment.

The I SHOT IT competition, unlike many other competitions, doesn't have a caption to the pictures. Each picture has to stand by it self: We have no data about who shot it, which camera was used, what the story behind the picture might be, how long ago the photo was taken, where it was, who are in the pictures, or any other leads that might explain the image or strengthen the story.

This on one hand demands that the picture works as a single picture on a screen, and if you view the images in the I SHOT IT competition from that viewpoint you will understand how many photos don't make it simply because there are elements missing or things that can be misunderstood. The image does not stand by itself; we do not know what the photographer thought or tried to capture, unless it is clear from the actual image.

The positive thing about it is that your background, equipment, portfolio, education, skill level et cetera does not matter. If you can take one photo by chance that is so good it can win, it can win. It is that single photo alone that determines if it is a winning photo or not. Even if it is the only photo you ever took.

Because we only see that one photo. And we don't give points for composition or other elements, as some competitions do, that may add up to enough points to determine a winner.

An image may explain everything in it self and in that way live up to this criteria, but then on top it has to show something that impress us the moment we see it. First impression has a lot to do with it, but actually also often how many layer a photo contains when studied again and again.

A category of photos are "Wow, I got it!" photos that the photographer may be proud of that he got at the right moment or feel proud that he managed to get, but if a photo does not contain more, it does not make it further. Many other elements need to be in place as well for that image to climb up the ladder to be amongst the Mark of Excellence and ultimately, the winner. This way there is a natural selection of images till we look at a final winner.

Mostly we agree without much discussion and the competition result is published. I the case of this quarterly B&W I SHOT IT competition, we spent more than five days discussing the winner because several pictures had some qualities that could make them the winner.

In this case we hope you may be as much in doubt as we were. We spent five days going back and forth about the winner. We slept on it, we argued for what was good and what was missing to clarify for our self which photo would be the winner.

And finally today we made a decision.

We made the decision that we wanted to give an award to two of the pictures that made us sleepless for some days. One is the award as the clear winner, the other for being an outstanding photo that probably would have won the competition, had there not been a better picture in the same quarter (a risk you actually aways run when you participate).

We wanted to share this story with you, and hopefully give you all some useful insight to participate and ultimately win in future I SHOT IT competitions. But also we are a little proud that we could change our mind and award more than one of the photos, thanks to Leica Camera AG who contributed the very special Leica X2 Limited edition by Paul Smith for us to make more people happy.

The judges
Thorsten Overgaard and Birgit Krippner

Faster Photo Deleting

January 11th, 2013

Deleting photos has now become a lot faster. Photos can be deleted from your account in an instant.

More...

Premium Photo Competition 2012 Q4

January 8th, 2013

We would like to announce the results for the last Premium Competition of 2012. The winner has won $1,130.00 plus a Leica X2 Camera worth approximately $2000.00. We'd like to thank everyone who entered this competition, who made the standard of photos so high.

Premium Photo Competition 2012 Q4

Our premium photo contests run for 3 months and you can enter any photo you like. The next premium competition has started and can be found here:

Premium Photo Competition 2013 Q1

Cat Photo Competition 5 2012

January 3rd, 2013

The results are in for the last cat photo contest. We're sure that you'll agree that our judge has chosen some simply stunning cat photos. Thank you for everyone who took part. The results can be viewed here:

Cat Photo Competition 5 2012

Happy Christmas!

December 24th, 2012

Wishing all of our members and friends a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

The I SHOT IT Team

Adult Content Warnings

December 20th, 2012

If you're browsing through photos on the I SHOT IT website, and you have a young child sitting next to you, the last thing you'll want is to see is a photo that has full nudity or a very violent scene. We're sure there are many people who are interested in nude photography, but we needed to do something to protect the younger viewers. We now have.

By default, a 'Warning Adult Content' message will be displayed instead of the photo. To see all of the adult only photos without a warning, you'll need to change your website settings here: Website Settings. This will create a cookie on your computer, which will allow you to see the adult photos instead of a warning message.

Because we do not monitor the latest photo uploads 24 hours a day we cannot say for certain, what will appear. Hopefully what we have done will go a long way to help prevent unwanted images.

Adding Photos To Competitions

December 14th, 2012

Here at I SHOT IT we are continuously adding improvements to make using our website simpler and easier. There's now one starting point for adding any of your photos to a competition:

Add Photo To Competition

This page has three parts to it:

  • Choose A Photo
  • Choose A Competition
  • Add Photo To Competition

All website are slightly different. It can take a while to understand how a website works. The hardest part of designing a website is trying to make it easy to use for the newcomers who aren't familiar with how it works. Please contact us with your experiences and let us know how we can continue to improve I SHOT IT.