MARILYN CORNWELL: contests

One of the fulfillment sites for my pictures is Redbubble, and they recently removed Groups from the site. Groups had functionality to bring artists work together into portfolios based on themes. The host would curate features on a regular basis and showcase member work. Contests were a regular part of groups as well. This was interesting and fun to submit images to groups to see which ones would be featured and how many times. With groups gone, I have moved this kind of activity over to Fine Art America, another fulfillment site I belong to. This is supposedly the largest site - hundreds of thousands of artists and thousands of groups. In comparison Redbubble is international and now oriented to graphic artists. Fine Art America is US-based and oriented to fine art and photography. Both print and deliver one's images on a wide variety of products with outstanding quality.

With bad weather keeping me from the garden, I have spent a little time on my website, hosted by BetterPhoto. What I liked about BetterPhoto is the monthly contest, and one could enter images every day and at the end of each month, winners are selected. Going through my images, I see winning badges in recent monthly contests. I have focused on other things and had not been checking on the winners anymore.

First is a tulip image from December 2019, a Finalist. It's a pleasant image with great details and clarity on the tulip petals, along with relatively good shapes of the leaves pointing up, and then contrasting vivid blur in the background.

A favourite orchard image that was a Finalist in January, probably thanks to the beautiful Skylum sky I added. What makes it a favourite, though, are the overarching branches in the foreground outstretched as arms inviting you into the view.

The Antithirum trio was a second place winner in January. These are wonderful flowers - very thick and veined, and with good colour variation. With work in Photoshop and Topaz filters, the background is mostly removed just leaving lines of some leaves, so that the image is also a study in the movement of curves. The heart shape of Antithirum flowers gives it an emotional element as well and the angle of the shot with their placement makes an interesting story.