November Editor's Picks with RyukyuMike's Photo Contest Tips

A Sacred Grove in Okinawa, Japan

Among the Mangroves in Okinawa

Among the Weeds

Orange-tip Butterfly

Plus, one photo from October's Contest, an Editor's Pick, which moved on to become a Finalist.

Entering Photo Contests is a great way to have your photography recognized and I would encourage any aspiring photographer to enter as many as possible.

The competition is stiff and every contest you enter has it's own set of rules.

Following the rules, every little detail of them, is the first step.  So, read them carefully.

Tens of thousands of contest entries are submitted every month.

The simplest way for judges to lighten their workload is eliminate anyone who didn't follow the rules.

HERE ARE MY FIVE TIPS FOR PHOTO CONTEST ENTRIES:

1.  Make sure the photo is sharp.  That means the subject is clear and the focus is not on something else in the picture's frame.  Judges have a good eyes for this.  You can't fool them.

2.  Exposure has to be perfect.  Underexposed and overexposed photos are eliminated, always.

3.  Composition.  Learn the basic rules of composition and apply them.  The Rule of Thirds, Leading Lines, Framing, Curves, Symmetry, Patterns and Background are just a few of the terms used in basic photographic composition.  If you don't understand them, you are just experimenting.  That's fine, and I encourage experimentation.  But, it rarely gets you anywhere in a photo contest.

After using 1-3 above, in taking a photo, the next two tips come in handy when you submit a contest entry.

4.  Title:  Give your photo a title that gets the judges attention.  I get away with just putting a critter's name on a wildlife photo, sometimes, just because it's something a judge has never seen before.  

But, if I shot a picture of a cat, I wouldn't title it "Cat".  Let someone else do that.

5.  Caption:  Try to come up with something interesting to say in your description of the photo.

Many contests base their scores on the five tips given above.  Some grade the photos entered by awarding a possible 20% of the total score for each of those five steps.

That means, if you took a perfect picture, as far as focus, exposure and composition go, you could lose out to the folks who had the best titles and captions.  Forty percent of your score may not even depend on what came out of your camera.  Another photographer can beat me with their choice of words.  

That means I have to use my brain, too.  OUCH !


Time permitting, I will add more about entering photo contests to my PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS.

Sunday's Silly Sign Nov 20, 2011 Don't Swim When It Is Drunk (Photo)

From a beach somewhere in Okinawa, Japan comes this Sunday's Silly Sign.

They have some rules I understand and a few that I don't.

The most important one, to me, would be

Don't swim when it is drunk.

I went home.

MORE IN THE DOOZIES

VISIT MY HOMEPAGE FOR THE PHOTO OF THE DAY

A Pile of Laughing Buddhas for Travel Photo Thursday

          Here's a whole pile of laughing Buddhas for TRAVEL PHOTO THURSDAY APRIL 21, 2011.

There's no telling what the story behind this collection might be. I'll have to do some further investigation. 

Not that I'm getting all religious, or anything like that, in my old age. I just like Buddhist stuff.

This one guy, Dali Lama XIV said, "KNOW THE RULES WELL, SO YOU CAN BREAK THEM EFFECTIVELY".  Sounds like a reasonable plan, to me.  So, that's what I try to do.  I know all the rules in Okinawa, Japan.

Now, I don't know what happened to the person or persons who started this collection of Buddhas but, I'll be snooping around to see if I can find out.

They don't look too shabby in the photo at the top of the page, except maybe, for the one on right side of the roof that got knocked over. 

When you zoom-in for a closer look, it appears they've been neglected.  Or, could it be they were all mud wrestling and they're laughing because they took those big sticks on their shoulders and knocked that one Buddha out ?

This pile of Laughing Buddhas is located on the left side of HWY 84 about a mile past the Nago City Pineapple Park.

SHOOT THIS BLOG AND WIN! A CONTEST WITH SOME RULES

This is a LIMITED OFFER, one time, probably THIS WEEK ONLY chance to WIN any photo in Mike's Ryukyu Gallery absolutely FREE. To win you have to SHOOT MY BLOG !

Shoot it just like I did in the photo above of my October 19, 2010 blog post. Only, there's a catch!
My Legal Advisor says we gotta have RULES. Don't ask who the legal advisor is. It's somebody who's always screaming  important stuff like, "Don't forget to take out the TRASH".

RULES:
1. Look at the view counter in the upper right hand corner of my blog.
2. Snap a screenshot of it when it hits 99,999. It's going to happen this week, I think.
3. Snap a shot of it when it hits 100,000. That could happen real soon after it hits 99,999.
4. Snap a shot of it at 100,001. That'd be when the contest is over, probably sometime this week.

LEGAL STUFF:
1. Only one screenshot of either 99999, 100000, or 100001 per individual may be entered.
2. Entries accepted via email, only.
3. There will be three prizes awarded. One for the first email containing the 99999 shot, one for the first email recieved with the 100000 and one for the first with the 100001 shot attached.
4. Offer is void in New Jersey and some other places where people talk funny. Just don't tell me where you live and you can participate if your email address is someplace where they have stupid laws and people call birds, boids. Do they still whack people there?

HOW TO ENTER:
1. If you don't know how to do a screenshot, don't worry. Prop your elbows on the table and shoot the winning numbers with your cell-phone camera or any other camera and email that shot to me.
2. To email me, if you're not already in my address book, simply go to MY HOMEPAGE and hit the thing centered on the top of the page that says "CONTACT ME". Then we can swap email addresses as long as you promise not to send any naked lady photos to me or naked anybodies, for that matter.
3. I will email the winners a humongous 300dpi JPEG file, suitable for printing, of any single photo they choose from any category in my photo gallery. If a winner prefers to have me print an 8x10 photo in either High Gloss or Matte, I will do that and cover the postage anywhere on Planet Earth providing it's not New Jersey or anywhere else where contests are prohibited by law. However, that means I'll need your personal mailing address. Have no fear; I don't do Xmas cards. I just want to give everybody (even people with boids) a chance to win.
4. Any disputes, gripes, or problems can be handled by the COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT. You can reach them by going to CONTACT ME and in your subject line type these words,
"COMPLAINT DEPARTMENT: C/O MRS RYUKYU MIKE" and see what happens !

All joking aside, this is a big event for me and there are way too many people for me to thank individually for the phenominal numbers of views my blog has been getting. I want to thank you all. If you're so inclined, make sure you follow the rules and SHOOT THIS BLOG !