Judge's comments:

I have to admit that I do not have much experience judging photographs over the net. I find that I can not read these photographs for sharpness. With that caveat, I try to use the same general stipulations as when looking at prints.

The first and most important quality that I look for is whether the photograph says something to me emotionally.

Secondly, I find myself attracted to those photographs that express their message with absolute clarity. Here, I am not speaking of focus, but rather of the ease by which one gains the point of the image. There should be nothing extraneous and the image should be so balanced that the center of attention is easily apparent.

Next, I look for those images that show me something new. A sunset or a view of the Grand Canyon may be beautiful, but how does it differ from all the other photographs that I have seen of such subjects?

Finally, do I find myself repeatedly returning to the image? If so, I am continuing to learn from it and find sustenance from it.

The duck taking flight wins my attention because it not only is beautifully composed, but captures a wonderful instant when the duck appears to be walking on water. By composing the image so that the duck fills the left side, the photographer has given the duck space to take off. By cutting off the top of the wings, the bottom of the duck's feet, and by surrounding the duck with water, the photographer has metaphysically extended the frame, furthering that sense of space. Yet the blue water background focuses all attention on the duck.

The grasshopper image also is wonderfully balanced, offering just enough space at the bottom of the image to give a sense of weight, and enough surrounding leaves to offer a sense of space and context. As with the duck, the grasshopper sets the balance around which everything else revolves. Yet what makes the photograph exceptional is that the shape, arrangement, and color of the leaves reflect the pattern, color, and sense of life in the grasshopper.

My third place choice offers a water sunset that moves beyond the other sunset offerings to suggest a powerful opening up of the sky and a visceral liquidity to the water.

These are the images that I keep coming back to, not because of a place, object, or animal that they depict, but because of a feeling they evoke as complete images.

I hope that these comments are helpful.

Dr. John Rohrbach
Associate Curator of Photographs
Amon Carter Museum
Fort Worth, Texas USA

About the judge:

Dr. Rohrbach has been making and working with photographs for more than twenty years. He began his career preparing and hanging exhibitions at the George Eastman House, and worked for about five years as director of the Paul Strand Archive before returning to school for his doctorate at the University of Delaware.
Since 1992 Dr. Rohrbach has worked at the Amon Carter Museum, which has a collection of more than 250,000 photographs. He is currently assembling a critical retrospective of the work of Eliot Porter.