Call me picky but i'm not seeing the greatness in this shot at all. I can only deduce that there was an overall drop in quality of entries this year (doubtful), someone on the panel received a hefty bung (possible) or the judges have lost their minds (highly likely). have a butchers and see what you think...

the winning shot can be seen here.

I guess no one from Caedes submitted this year. We'd have swept it.

i agree. i was looking at this earlier today.
i like the winning shot only i think its nonsense compared to a lot of the other photos. i would have given the first place either to the "Animal Behaviour: birds." Red crowned crane in the snow, or the heron with the fish. both outstanding photos and difficult to capture. im also getting tired of seeing Bad under exposed photos of Chimpanzees constantly winning big photography competitions. in this competition the winner of the Animal Behaviour Mammals, and the winner of the 15-17junior category.
i particularly like the two birds afore mentioned, alo the pelican bath and the common terns, and the winner of the plants. The Eric Hosking Awards however, are absaloutly breathtakingly fantastic.
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That does seem a bit ordinary... i wonder if maybe the small image on the web page isn't doing it justice? Or have you already seen the photo at full size...

I am no expert but that winning shot does not say anything to me. We should enter and show some real artwork done with a camera.

I will not bash the winning photo but rather wonder what criteria the judges use to make a decision;-) It is a great photo which reminds me more of something you would see as a shark swims into a school of anchove. I thought it was quite unique!

maybe the same criteria for our current contest :-) nothings in focus, the exposure and camera shake is all over the place as is the framing and composition, hell - you can only really tell what it is because of the description that goes with it :-)

It looks better at a bigger size.

it looks a little better yes - still not convinced about it being the best on offer this year though....

I have never seen a bad photo in that exhibition, so I will reserve judgment until I have seen it on the wall next time the exhibition comes to town. I’m sure we are missing something from these little images. The quality of those photos is usually so high it makes me look like a total beginner.

they are good yes - and there are lots of categories in the competition including junior sections and natural world shots - maybe we should have a concerted community effort in the next competition and have lots of images entered. It would be great to see a Caedes member win something and i'm sure the cash prizes wouldnt go amiss either. There are many excellent wildlife photographers here who i'm sure could would have a very good chance.

I agree, if anyone wants to have a go the conditions are here.

the next competition opens in Jan 2006 so start snapping (or digging out your old shots - images upto four years old are also eligible I believe...)

Apart from some excellent, dramatic photojournalism in the "Power" section of the competition I didn't see anything that really impressed me with it's quality, originality or feeling. I think we've been spoiled.

How about this one....runner up aparently....10/10 from me!

http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/whats-on/temporary-exhibitions/wpy/gallery/image.jsp?image=3474

Actually the winning photograph is not shown in full on either of the pages linked to so far. I think this is the full photo; annoyingly though I am still unable to view it at full resolution, but I can see that the composition at least is more interesting than those other pages suggested.

And here is another one.

I'd have to side with Alex that while the winning shot does look better at full size it still isnt a patch on many of the runner up shots.

I think I can see why they picked that particular image as the winner. It is quite a different piece from the normal wildlife scene. I'm sure that the judges have seen more than their share of nice normal wildlife photos and this was a refreshing change for them. Personally I like the bathing geese.

The comments about getting the caedes community more involved in contests had me thinking. Maybe we can have a "contest announcement" forum where everyone could post details of available contests to enter.

sounds good :-)

Perhaps a short announcement in the news column with a link to the contest would do the trick. The forum would then be available for people who want to discuss the pros and cons of those competitions.

Great idea Geri:-)

Yes, another good idea to get people more involved in their community and their hobby...