Apr 24 2020 - Catching Up on Winners

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.

Read past POTD's at my Blog: http://www.blog.marilyncornwell.com Purchase at: FAA - marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

The Chef's Summit

Is there something new in food? It is hard to find out.  It doesn't seem to be a premier 'topic' on google - one retrieves food near me and other take-out sorts of topics.  With a little digging, though, I find out there is a Canadian Pizza Summit each year with a competition for pizza chef of the year. In 2018  two winners shared the title of Chef of the Year. Chef of the Year (Traditional) is Giuseppe Cortinovis of Ignite Pizzeria in Vancouver. Chef of the Year (Open) is Dean Litster of Armando's Pizza in Windsor, Ont. Cortinovis' pizza is called The Queen, a twist on the Margherita, while Litster's winning entry was a creative pizza he dubbed The Dean Martin. The award chef of the year (around the world) is covered on finedininglovers.com.  The Le Chef compilation of the 100 best chefs in the world for 2019 has been released with chef Arnaud Donckele from the La Vague d'Or restaurant in Saint-Tropez named the best chef in the world. You can see pictures of his 18 dishes HERE. And you can see the menu at the end with prices - 295 Euro is over $400 Canadian. The Red Rose dessert is 44 Euro. The world restaurant awards announced their shortlist of nominees on January 17th.  You can read about it HERE. There is the list of Big Plates:  These are the short-listed restaurants in categories like Original Thinking, Off-Map Destination, No Reservations Required, House Special, Event of the Year, Ethical Thinking and so on. Then there are the small plates - the short list categories (tongue in cheek) are:  tweezer-free kitchen of the year, trolley of the year, tattoo-free chef of the year, and so on.  Wouldn't that be wonderful to see a chef without tattoos! For the rest of us, the top 2019 trends don't have this razzle-dazzle.  They seem straight forward:   Sri Lankan cuisine Burmese cuisine Meat-free Kefir Ugly fruit and veg Hidden vegetables Food halls Eating where you shop... and so on. Our pictures today come from Powell Garden in Kansas City.

BetterPhoto - My Blue Flash Places 2nd in January contest

BetterPhoto Winners

2nd Place Digital Darkroom

Staff Favourite

Finalist in Flowers

BetterPhoto Winners    One of my favourite pictures won second place in the BetterPhoto January contest.  It's 'My Blue Flash' - I turned one of the lilies from Brian's Lilycrest Gardens Field into a blue lily, using software filters.  It placed second in the digital darkroom category.  Two more images placed in the contest - the pink dahlia placed as a staff favourite, and the Lotus image placed as a Finalist. I keep thinking the dahlia should place higher in the contest, and every month, I do some work on it and resubmit it.  It has to be that the judges don't like it as much as I do.  Never mind.

Betterphoto June Contest Finalists

The betterphoto contest each month boasts over 11,200 photo entries. These were my two finalists among the top 707 images. 


Walking

The Earth Laughs in Flowers