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Re: [APD] Re Red Eye--Redder Eye



The AGA contest started out from your efforts and no one,
imo, put more effort into it's development back then than
you did -- and a number of folks put in an tremendous
amount of effort over a long period. And it was a tough
job. I don't want to take anything away from that. In fact
I think you deserve more credit than you've gotten for what
you accomlished and what it has led to. After AGA came ADA
then the AB contest and others.

So don't get me wrong when I say, with respect, and it's
only my opinion, that your a bit off on this photograph
rule thing. I don't think there's anything about how
photograph is taken or processed that's in the published
criteria that are given to the judges. And I can think of a
few reasons why, not the least of them being that no one
could enforce a rule like that in any way that mattered.
First of all, what counts as maniuplation rather than
merely transposing or producing the photograph is not a
black and white matter, the penumbra comprises much of both
facets of the endeavor. For example, whether the original
material is film or digital, someone has to decide how much
contrast and brightness. And diff films have diff color
saturations. Digi cams often have a number of these
settings available before a photo is even taken. It's hard
to separate "taking" a picture from "making" a picture
because exposure can be done many diff ways and exposure is
only part of the process of translating a "live" image onto
computer screens. 

Some stuff like half fish in midfield are easily seen and
disregarded as unrealistic antics or overlooked mistakes. 
Others are indistinguishable from the picture taking
process itself. Some cams have difficulty dealing with the
range of brightness in a field of view, especially with
fields of view like an aquascape, where so much of the
light is coming from directly overhead. A picture from one
of those cams mmight look more like the aquarium itself if
one pieces together the brighter part of one photograph
(toned down a bit) with the darker part of another
(lightened a bit) -- or one can do this with photoshop
layers or MS DI stacks, or have the film developer do some
sensible dodge and burn. But whether the photo is taken and
processed, I don't think it's something the judges have on
their list of things to put points towards or against.

In the ADA contest, I believe the photgraph itself is being
considered -- have to look up the current rules again to be
sure. In the AGA contest, I'm pretty sure that the photo
itself is demphasized -- as I've often been reminded, the
AGA Aquascaping Contest is not a photo Contest, the photos
are merely the most practical method of allowing the
aquascapes in various parts of the world to be viewed by
all the judges who also are located in various places
around the world. 

The contest adminsitrator might reserve the right to
prescreen some photographs for any very obvious issues, but
in those cases, which I belive to be very rare, a
suggestion is offered rather than a mandate. "You have a
scalare in with African mbuna -- you might want to submit
this in the garden category instead of biotope." or "You
might want to resubmit with a photo that has only whole
fish in the middle field."

I'm not trying to put words in the administrator's mouth,
I'm just imagining.

Scott H.
--- James Purchase <jppurchase at sympatico_ca> wrote:
> 
> I can definitively state that as far as the AGA Showcase
> goes, ANY image 
> manipulation other than cropping would render the entry
> inadmissible. I 
> know, because I was in charge of writing the rules (with
> help, of course). 
> We wanted to make the judging as fair and impartial as
> possible.
> 
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