Hi everyone,

The July Competition

I just wanted to give you a quick update on the move and, while I’m in the neighborhood give you the results from the June competition (“Abstract”) and announce the theme and rules for this month’s  competition. Let me begin with the last point - this month your image would be described “It came from a Grocery Store”. Note that I don’t say which grocery store or when it was acquired or why you got it, simply that the macro photograph(s) that you submit are of an object, shot at 1:2 or greater magnification, that came from a grocery store.

The Rules

One rule that I planned to enforce this month and announced on my website was about former competition winners being allowed to submit only a  single image from this month going forward. But I messed up and did not change the wording in the rules on the competition page, so  cannot in all fairness enforce a rule that was posted properly - but it is now, or soon will be - former winners and ties get only one entry per month. It is the same for our multiple winners. Everyone else gets two entries - and no one gets 3, 4 ,or 5 entries, ever. So this month you will not be punished for submitting two entries, but in consideration of those winners who did follow the new rule, we will only accept your first submission - which sounds pretty reasonable to me. Something else I should explain is why this month there is no video. I have no equipment to record a video, not connection to upload it over, and no time to make the thing anyway. So this is a written version, and a short written version at that. And that leads me to the first point - an update on my move.

Moving one’s home, business, and studio is every bit as much fun as a vigorous frontal sinus lavage, and possibly more. Moving anytime is terrible, but moving in the heat of an Alabama July is just the worst and at the time of this writing I had not actually started the actual moving part yet! I was still packing. The move started the day after I wrote this and it took all of two days to complete - that is just the driving part. So for the week before and the week after this move I have remained hot and tired and simply have not been able to stop mislabeling boxes long enough to make  a video, let alone one that you might enjoy watching. So I decided to do the competition announcement this way, just this once. And it is not really me that did the heavy lifting to judge your entries! That accolade goes to next month’s guest Judge and all around good fellow, Harold Hall, who anticipated the tight spot this move would put me in and contacted me to offer his expert judging services to help me out in my time of need. And I accepted his offer. So this is a competition scored independently by both Harold and myself - allowing me to fulfill my promise to have two judges for future competitions. He did a spectacular job (because I agreed with his choices, in most part) and I should add that I am honored to have such a seasoned expert on the panel. As is my practice, I shared my scoring strategy with the guest judge, who scored each image using the same criteria. Then I fed his scores and mine into a Supercomputer  which struggled for less than four hours before tabulating the results into what you are about to read. As always the Honorable Mentions are not presented in any particular order, but the top ten most certainly are (in reverse order).

But before we jump into the results, a word on the topic.

ABSTRACT - relating to or denoting art that does not attempt to represent external reality, but rather seeks to achieve its effect using shapes, colors, and textures

We had one DQ (5-images) and several entries that I had a hard time thinking of as abstract images. I was definitely looking for images that implied meaning using shapes colors, and textures. When I look at an abstract artwork, especially a photograph, and I recognize what I am looking at, I find that knowledge to be quite distracting. When I make an abstract picture I take pains to make sure you see the colors, features, patterns first. If you recognize the subject, I have not done what I was trying to do.With a successful abstract, the viewers eyes  are locked into the shapes, the colors, the reflections, shadows, and the textures. The viewer is encouraged to look beyond the subject to see the beauty in the components that make up the image. So with all that in mind, here are the results from the June competition as judged by Harold Hall and I:

Honorable mentions

Aljo Anthony for “Waves of Green”

George Simpkins for “Rebirth of the Serpent”

Tom Biegalski for “Rusty Rivers”

Julie Botts for “GlueStack #2”

Francesc Damleau for “Flow of Time”

Finalists

In 10th place - Pierre Soreau for “Sometimes Rust is Creative”

9th - Mike Olsen - “Stormy Weather Map”

8th - Amy Perlmutter - “Butterfly Scale Mandela”

7th - Norbert Balog - “Smoke”

6th - Mike Olsen - “Moth Wing”

5th - Hanspeter Steiner - “Some Transparency & Reflection”

4th - Alan Lyle - “Close Shave”

In 3rd place is George Simpkins with the “Galaxy of a bread Slice”

In at number 2 is Robert Storost with “Pseudo SEM”

And our winner for June 2024, with his outstanding image “Cellular Magnetism” is TOM BIEGALSKI!

Congratulations Tom, on a very successful showing in June. We both loved your winning photograph and agreed that it was the very essence of a great abstract work. And here is the winning image for June 2024: