I've had my first ever submission rejection from a group on deviantART; it's a bit of a surprise, having been on dA for over 6 years now. The grounds for rejection?
The photo was taken on my Blackberry.
That was it. Because I didn't take it on a "proper camera", it was deemed a "snapshot" - artistic merit such as composition etc was not considered at all.
Interrestingly, the other photo submitted at the same time was accepted - despite the fact it was taken on a camera with lower specs than the camera on my Blackberry (2.1MP vs 3.2MP). On technical merit, it was inferior to the photo that was rejected.
It's like having a painting be rejected because it was painted using synthetic brushes instead of sable ones. It's basically hardware snobbery, pure and simple. It's missing the point.
Photography isn't about who has the more expensive kit. It's about knowing what to do with it. That $10K of equipment in your hand is worthless if you don't have the artistic talent to compose the perfect image.
From now on all photos I upload to dA will have the EXIF data stripped out. The quality of my work will speak for itself.
The worst thing about this? It's not something I can "improve" upon, skillwise; the only way in the moderators' eyes I could improve the supposed quality of my work would be solely through spending a large amount of cash. Which upon reflection speaks far more about their close-mindedness than about my skills and talent. Rejection still hurts though. :-/
1 comment:
Actually looking at the two photos closely I can see why the group would reject the one taken with the blackberry and not the other. The photo taken with the blackberry, when view at full size show a lot of little artifacts and what I can only call jaggies(most evident when looking at the outline of the doll against the background) And the focus seems a little odd with leaves in focus and quickly becoming blurry. The non blackberry photo doesn't display those faults, and ultimately becomes a better photo overall.
As far as the blackberry having "better specs" having more megapixels doesn't necessarily it'll take better photos. Check out The Great MP Swindle who explains it as far just point and shoot cameras are concerned.
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