Digital Home Thoughts - News & Reviews for the Digital Home

We all enjoy approval and encouragement, even if it comes from strangers. Sometimes especially if it comes from strangers, because it can seem more genuine (hey, your mom is supposed to love you no matter what). This is a cautionary tale for photographers. About seven years ago (yeah, this story goes back a ways) I saw a banner ad for a photo contest, and I thought "What the heck, I'll enter one of my photos and see what happens." It was a Picture.com contest, which they seem to be still running at the time of this writing.

When I submitted my photos, I thought it was a pretty good image - it was a picture of my young cousin smiling, and it's hard to take a bad photo of a child smiling. At the time I took this photo I had a Canon Powershot S100 (no digital SLR yet), and I was just starting to get interested in photography. I didn't think my image was "award winning" by any stretch, but sometimes all it takes to be the winner is for no one else to show up, so I thought I'd give it a try. Below is the image I submitted for the "contest". Read more...