Are You Looking For A Challenge?

BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
For the past couple years I've been involved at a site called DPChallenge.com, short for "Digital Photography Challenge". Its focus is to provide site participants with weekly challenges (one open to anyone, two additional open only to paying members, plus two monthly member only Free Study challenges), each with a specific topic that must be shot for within the week after the announcement, and followed by a week of voting by site participants.

I went there hoping that it would be a place that would allow me to get some real critiques and instructive comments on photos taken for each challenge, and I liked the idea of having to shoot for the assignment instead of, like other sites, allowing people with huge catalogs the opportunity to pick their lifetime bests. Alas, the site has its drawbacks, namely that comments and feedback are rare, and the 1 to 10 scoring system used when voting is labeled "Bad (1)" to "Good (10)" but there is no defined or enforceable criteria by which you're supposed to apply your votes - so you can throw any number at any photo with no need to justify it. Yes, it might as well be "Hate" to "Love" with whatever that may mean to any person at any time, and yes, it can be maddening when you see a 1 or 2 on a shot you know is one of your best and you will never understand why some one felt the need to give it to you.

What I'm saying is, the place is far from perfect.

With that said, if you can get past the eccentricities, oddballs and occasional nitpicking about how the place is run (one guy started it over 10 years ago and it basically survives on his willingness to push it forward - he does not openly participate in challenges and rarely posts in the forum), it can be a decent tool to get you out to shoot things you wouldn't normally shoot with deadlines looming. Each challenge has a set of editing restrictions that must be followed, from "Minimal" (which is literally shooting JPEG SOOC with resizing and basic sharpening the only possible edits - no brightness, contrast, etc.) to Expert (which is basically whatever the heck you want to do, from compositing 1000 images to complex digital art). The majority are in the Advanced category which allows for most regular photographic adjustments (including the removal of spots and powerlines, but not anything that would be considered to have changed the image in any significant way), as well as HDR techniques (but not panoramas). There are also occasional League situations where photographers form teams and compete against each other in an 8 to 10 week tournament for pride and glory - but no actual prizes.

Yeah, I know, I'm doing a hell of a job selling the place, right?! Site participation has been down of late, and it would be great to infuse it with some new blood and maybe get things going. Any registered user can participate in the weekly Open challenge, and those who pay the $25/yr membership fee are eligible for all challenges (well worth it). I invite you to come on over and at least try it out. Open Challenges are announced on Tuesday night at midnight Eastern time, so on Wednesday morning you'll know what we're shooting this coming week (currently the open challenge is "Tourist Guide - What would you show a tourist who showed up where you live?" and that ends tomorrow night). Prizes are virtual so the glory is whatever you want to give yourself.

The forum activity is almost non-existent, but it's an opportunity to shoot and post. Let me know if you head over.
 
hark

hark

Administrator
Staff member
Super Mod
Thanks for the info. I might saunter over there and join although I'm not sure how often I can participate.
 
K

Kevin H

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
For the past couple years I've been involved at a site called DPChallenge.com, short for "Digital Photography Challenge". Its focus is to provide site participants with weekly challenges (one open to anyone, two additional open only to paying members, plus two monthly member only Free Study challenges), each with a specific topic that must be shot for within the week after the announcement, and followed by a week of voting by site participants.

I went there hoping that it would be a place that would allow me to get some real critiques and instructive comments on photos taken for each challenge, and I liked the idea of having to shoot for the assignment instead of, like other sites, allowing people with huge catalogs the opportunity to pick their lifetime bests. Alas, the site has its drawbacks, namely that comments and feedback are rare, and the 1 to 10 scoring system used when voting is labeled "Bad (1)" to "Good (10)" but there is no defined or enforceable criteria by which you're supposed to apply your votes - so you can throw any number at any photo with no need to justify it. Yes, it might as well be "Hate" to "Love" with whatever that may mean to any person at any time, and yes, it can be maddening when you see a 1 or 2 on a shot you know is one of your best and you will never understand why some one felt the need to give it to you.

What I'm saying is, the place is far from perfect.

With that said, if you can get past the eccentricities, oddballs and occasional nitpicking about how the place is run (one guy started it over 10 years ago and it basically survives on his willingness to push it forward - he does not openly participate in challenges and rarely posts in the forum), it can be a decent tool to get you out to shoot things you wouldn't normally shoot with deadlines looming. Each challenge has a set of editing restrictions that must be followed, from "Minimal" (which is literally shooting JPEG SOOC with resizing and basic sharpening the only possible edits - no brightness, contrast, etc.) to Expert (which is basically whatever the heck you want to do, from compositing 1000 images to complex digital art). The majority are in the Advanced category which allows for most regular photographic adjustments (including the removal of spots and powerlines, but not anything that would be considered to have changed the image in any significant way), as well as HDR techniques (but not panoramas). There are also occasional League situations where photographers form teams and compete against each other in an 8 to 10 week tournament for pride and glory - but no actual prizes.

Yeah, I know, I'm doing a hell of a job selling the place, right?! Site participation has been down of late, and it would be great to infuse it with some new blood and maybe get things going. Any registered user can participate in the weekly Open challenge, and those who pay the $25/yr membership fee are eligible for all challenges (well worth it). I invite you to come on over and at least try it out. Open Challenges are announced on Tuesday night at midnight Eastern time, so on Wednesday morning you'll know what we're shooting this coming week (currently the open challenge is "Tourist Guide - What would you show a tourist who showed up where you live?" and that ends tomorrow night). Prizes are virtual so the glory is whatever you want to give yourself.

The forum activity is almost non-existent, but it's an opportunity to shoot and post. Let me know if you head over.
Click to expand...


Think we have it on here :D
 
W

Whiskeyman

Senior Member
It looks interesting, Jake. My big issue right now is finding time for photography, and I'm not doing well in my search. I may have to consider participating to force my hand..

Thank you for the information on the opportunity.

WM
 
R

RocketCowboy

Senior Member
Do you think there's an opportunity to take what you like from that site, combine it with what you like from here, and have a better win-win situation?

Honest question, not trolling... a just with that great sales pitch, I'm thinking there's gotta be an option to make something better.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
RocketCowboy said:
Do you think there's an opportunity to take what you like from that site, combine it with what you like from here, and have a better win-win situation?

Honest question, not trolling... a just with that great sales pitch, I'm thinking there's gotta be an option to make something better.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

Is there an opportunity? Sure. My post here was not meant to disparage anything that happens here nor belittle anything that's already in place. But since you asked, yes, there's a weekly and even a monthly photo challenge here, and yes, they provide much the same opportunity from a shooting perspective. If you're looking for simply someone to give you something to shoot during the week then this is more than you need.

But from a challenge perspective I think the structure around the contests here is sorely lacking, and it's something I voiced when they were reintroduced. I struggle with two things, which I recognize are inherent to the way this forum is structured and cannot be solved without investing time, energy, and potentially funds into software modifications, but it is because others may struggle with them that I offer the alternative.

First, there is a complete lack of anonymity in the submission of the entries. In any juried contest this is critical. We may like to think that we don't play favorites or that we can look at a photo independent of the name, but on a forum like this it's hard to see a photo next to a name that you've had experiences - good and/or bad - and not have that connection color your response to it even a little. The challenges here are far closer to what you'd get from your local photo club, though even they manage to preserve some level of anonymity during the showing. To fix this photographers would need to have a mechanism by which to submit their photos to a thread where they can be displayed without attribution with only the people behind the curtain knowing who's who.

Which brings me to my second issue, the voting process and the timing around it. The two step process here fails for two reasons:

1) The early bird gets the worm. A photo submitted within 24 hours has more time to gather more "likes" and move on to the finals than one submitted with an hour to go, even though the photo submitted at the last minute may be a far better photograph that was conceived and executed across the entire 7 day period (waiting for the right light/weather/person, editing time, etc.). It's a photography challenge, not a speed challenge, and when you have folks saying things like, "I really don't have all that much time to shoot", the early bird phenomenon is just one more reason not to.

2) Not everyone gets to be a part of the final tally. Sure, in the end people only really care about who "wins", but if you take the time to play then you really want to know how you stacked up, not just that you didn't make the finals. At least I do. It's not about who I "beat" or "lost to", it's about how my work is perceived across the breadth of the work submitted, allowing me to assess what others perceived as "better" and decide whether that is simply a matter of taste or a deficiency in my photography that needs work.


Again, having been involved in the early discussion back in 2014 for bringing the challenges back I understand that these two things mean a lot of work, and I suspect that for this site it's unnecessary. What you/we have here is a great enthusiast site, but it's limited both in its scope (Nikon users) and setup. What you do here is great, and the challenges are fine, but they lack what I want in a weekly challenge site - and that's probably as it should be. You want it all then you have something like 500px or Viewbug or 1x, which I personally have problems figuring out sometimes (is it a photo sharing site? a contest site? a social site?).

I repeat, my intention in sharing this link was not to condemn what's here but to offer those who want something more another place to participate in. As I said, the forum/social aspect there is nothing like here, so it should do nothing to diminish participation in this site - if it had that potential I wouldn't have posted. There are other sites I participate in that are much heavier in that respect and for that reason I keep them to myself.

And I acknowledge I may have misstated specifics about how the challenges here are run. I claim ignorance, but I am only attempting to lay out perspective and not make specific arguments. These were the guidelines as I understood them over a year ago when I last participated in the challenges and if they have changed in some ways I acknowledge that - I did perform a cursory glance through them beforehand and did not see an significant change so please, there's no need to poke holes in my statements for minor factual errors.
 
Last edited:
B

Blacktop

Senior Member
@BackdoorHippie Went over there to check it out and ended up registering. (blacktop-pete is the username. blacktop was taken it seems)

I've been in a rut lately shooting pretty much just birds and landscapes. Not only that, but I seem to be stuck at the same level for a while now. Not only my shots are not getting any better, but it seems that I'm trying to make up for my lackluster results with heavy post processing which usually turn out worse than expected.

I'm off to work, but will dive into it later in the week.
 
Last edited:
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
Blacktop said:
@BackdoorHippie Went over there to check it out and ended up registering. (blacktop-pete is the username. blacktop was taken it seems)

I've been in a rut lately shooting pretty much just birds and landscapes. Not only that, but I seem to be stuck at the same level for a while now. Not only my shots are not getting any better, but it seems that I'm trying to make up for my lackluster results with heavy post processing which usually turn out worse than expected.

I'm off to work, but will dive into it later in the week.
Click to expand...

Cool. There's a "Big Month" that we're doing over there again this year, though not nearly as "big" as last year. Basically the idea is to photograph as many different species of birds as you can between April 1 and April 30. There's a link to the challenge in the Forum section under Side Challenges & Tournaments. You don't really need to sign up to participate, but sticking your name in always seems to prompt one other response.
 
W

wornish

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
..................The two step process here fails for two reasons:

1) The early bird gets the worm. A photo submitted within 24 hours has more time to gather more "likes" and move on to the finals than one submitted with an hour to go, even though the photo submitted at the last minute may be a far better photograph that was conceived and executed across the entire 7 day period (waiting for the right light/weather/person, editing time, etc.). It's a photography challenge, not a speed challenge, and when you have folks saying things like, "I really don't have all that much time to shoot", the early bird phenomenon is just one more reason not to.

2) Not everyone gets to be a part of the final tally. Sure, in the end people only really care about who "wins", but if you take the time to play then you really want to know how you stacked up, not just that you didn't make the finals. At least I do. It's not about who I "beat" or "lost to", it's about how my work is perceived across the breadth of the work submitted, allowing me to assess what others perceived as "better" and decide whether that is simply a matter of taste or a deficiency in my photography that needs work.


..........

Couldn't agree more. Thats exactly why I stopped submitting entries and I am now less active on here.

Don't know what the answer is but will certainly take a look at the link you posted.
Click to expand...
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
I hear you, Dave. This site is great for Nikon enthusiasts, and I've pointed folks there over here (which is why posting in a 365/366 thread is so hard since I have stuff over there that I need to hide for up to 2 weeks for voting purposes). It's actually a really well organized site for challenges - but that's what it's designed for. Unfortunately, it's been around so long that it's like a n aircraft carrier when it comes to reacting to a change in direction, which is why I'd love to see it infused with some new blood.
 
R

RocketCowboy

Senior Member
BackdoorHippie said:
My post here was not meant to disparage anything that happens here nor belittle anything that's already in place.
Click to expand...

That's exactly how I took your initial post, and my apologies if it sounded like I was trolling or insinuating any other motive for the post.

I think you're right on with both counts; the timing and the popularity contest. I also asked about where the challenge topics come from because that also seems to be a compelling component for how much participation any of the challenges get here. I don't know if there's a way to modify things here with the current forum software to make up for that, or if another site could make up for the short comings you listed with the other site. Either way, I figured the discussion would be healthy and might get some of the smart people thinking up a better way to invent the wheel. ;)
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
RocketCowboy said:
That's exactly how I took your initial post, and my apologies if it sounded like I was trolling or insinuating any other motive for the post.

...

I also asked about where the challenge topics come from because that also seems to be a compelling component for how much participation any of the challenges get here.
Click to expand...

No, it was a fair question to ask given what folks are doing here, which I should have at least acknowledged up front.

As for challenge topics, the guy who runs the place chooses them with input from site members (there's a section where you can make challenge suggestions) and the Site Council (a group of long time members that act as moderators and also enforcers of the editing rules (a serious thing and one open for much debate at times). In choosing topics they try not to repeat something that's been done in the last couple years, and when you consider that there are 3 challenges a week/40 challenges a year that's a daunting task. Some of them aren't all that exciting, others offer almost no inspiration to go out and shoot for them, while others bring in people by the droves. The nice thing is that they archive all the results since day one - that's 2241 challenges as of this morning - with topics and all submitted photos. So, when you see a topic like Pi III, and you really don't know what the heck to shoot, you can go back and look at Pi and Pi II for a little inspiration.
 
BackdoorArts

BackdoorArts

Senior Member
rocketman122 said:
looks interesting, what are the requirements to get in?
Click to expand...

Same as here, an email and password to register. That makes you eligible for the weekly Open challenges and access to most of the forums. As with Contributor status here, a $25/year membership gives you access to every challenge (3 per week plus 2 monthly Free Study challenges) and to the member only discussion forums (I think there's just one).
 
Top