This has been a short short month for me. I had to go on a couple of short yet intensive work trips and an assortment of social events and a holiday party that has left me drained and dreading my hair iron. I am sorry for the delay in posting the results of the November 2011 DMBLGiT photo contest. The judges did a great job and for the most part we were pretty consistent in our scoring. So much so that a couple of categories actually tied up and I had to do a quick round 2 to make the final decision.
Enough of my yada-yada. Here are the winners!
Overall Winners
First place: Soma of eCurry with her Strawberry Basil Ice-Cream. She is way ahead of everyone else in terms of her scores and also scored high for originality.
Second place: Chang Pick Yin of PickYin’s Place with her Chicken with Rice and Mushrooms.
Third place: there’s a tie!
Pamela of Unodedos with her Cherry Tomato, Mozzarella, and Zucchini Pie
and Vidya of Kurry Leaves with her Prawns and Drumstick Curry
We also picked one winner from each of the individual categories used for judging – Edibility, Originality, and Aesthetics. The winners in this category are chosen outside of the overall winners above.
Winner of Edibility Category
Jasenka of Sweet Corner with her Pumpkin Cheesecake
Winner of Originality Category
Claude-Olivier of 1001 Recettes with her image titled “Autumn is coming…”
Winner of Aesthetics Category
Karen of Citrus and Candy with her Vietnamese Chicken Salad
If you want to take a peek at all the entries, here’s the Picasa Gallery. Huge thanks to the judges once again, and also to Andrew for giving me the opportunity to host DMBLGiT this month. It was fun and totally worth all the spreadsheet and excel-crunching I had to do! If you are interesting in being a host of a future edition of DMBLGiT, find details here on how to go about it.
DMBLGiT December 2011 Edition will be hosted by Arundhuti of My Saffron Kitchen.
Congrats to the winners and good job hosting the even Nags…
Thank you for that Soma. I think I need to learn how to sift out rubbish too. Working on it 🙂
Hmmmmm :)Seems like a stage of debate here. I was going to write to Nags an email, but I guess I will add my 2 cents worth here. A few things I wanted to mention… personally I do not care about nasty comments. How each of us decide to live our lives and how we decide to "behave" is a personal choice.While politeness makes everyone happy, I feel one should just allow the nastiness to brush the sleeves and not affect our lives at all! What upsets me is that Nags has to deal with this in her space and I feel guilty as I feel it is somewhat because of me. Nags I am sorry that you have to deal with this 🙁
I was VERY surprised when I clicked from my mail and saw this page unfold to see my name on the top. For a second I thought Nags had posted the results backwards for a change LOL..I had not expected this to win and least of all in the Overall Category.
well this picture was supposed to be a fun playful one, inspired by another artist(mentioned in my post) and also with something that my little girl had told me once… that she wishes she could paint ice cream in the walls of her room! I agree it is a totally diff. aspect of food photography, but we are allowed to do that I believe.. again it is our personal life. I do not find this photograph "delicious" and yes it went down the drain:). Apart from this contest and what we bloggers do behind the scenes, the world of food photography is quite "unreal" and not so delicious if you would find out what goes behind the magazine photographs. Some of them, you would rather not! I have scored/judged DMBLGIT a few times, and with those criteria and the categories in mind, I would say this style as Original. How it went up to the overall win, I do not know (I am not at all disputing the judges here, for how I know how it is individually judged and Nags had a very varied spectrum of judges this time).. again it shows personal preference. I am not trying to justify my photograph here. That is not my intent. Since this particular photograph is creating the noise here, I wanted to write a bit about how it happened.
There were really great looking photographs in the gallery, but among these I would have loved to see Jasenka's Cheesecake/Claude's Autumn Pears/or Pick Yin's Chicken and rice photo up there at the top instead of mime. All of them are so truly beautiful and perfect in their own ways!
This event is one of my favorite one in the Food Blogging world and those of you who enjoy food photography will agree with me in that we participate not to win ( I think we have left behind a 3 year old child's sense of competitiveness), but to enjoy the beautiful gallery, learn from them, encounter new styles, forms, lights and also teach yourself from them. The event comes with fantastic categories and I feel it is a great learning experience to see how someone else other than you who has taken the photograph sees it.. if it is seen at the same angle as yours or it is a very diff. one.. i could go on and on.. But I would love to thank Andrew and the hosts and the judges for keeping this alive and going. Why someone would want to make this an unpleasant experience is really beyond me….:)
I don't know if I made any point here or mumbled out my heart, but I needed to let this out. Please bear with me.
Congrats to all winners. The strawberry ice cream photo has stolen my attention from the beginning. It's unique and original. I would go for this one too. 🙂
Thanks to Nags for hosting this event.
Congrats to Soma and other winners. I am totally with you on this. It doesn't cost a thing to be nice!
All images are good because everyone has a different view.
What we should all have in common is deference for others.
Thank you very much to the judges and the organizer for always doing a good job.
Do I see a case of sour grapes in some of the comments rather than an honest opinion?
And It doesn't matter if the scoop of icecream is actually eaten or not after the shot for it to qualify to be a winner in a cintest – the whole point of the contest seems to be lost somewhere by the people who are commenting. If you want edibility alone to be judged, there is another award for that!
Thanks for all the hard work judges and Nags for the round up et al.
After looking through the gallery I see what a tough job the judges had. I would like to congratulate all of the winners and entrants for the beautiful pictures.
Hi Nags
First of all congrats to all the winners.
Second, I agree with you Nags ,those comments were unnecessary and hurtful, there is a particular way to put their word across,very demotivating.I really hope Soma does not feel hurt by those words.
I have gone through her blog and her pictures are amazing,she does have talent no doubt.But to tell you the truth Iam not a big fan of this particular picture and same goes for the cherry tomato pie and chicken salad.
Coming to the strawberry ice cream…its is definitely very original but not very appealing to a foodies vision.I am sure this particular scoop of ice cream actually went down the drain after being photographed ,Iam sure Soma will agree with me. but people need to understand is that this picture won from a photography point of view and not food point of view.I am sure the very talented judges have seen something very original in this picture.
People..before passing rude comments please go through Somas blog.She has done amazing photography.
Kevin
Thank you Nags for hosting and judges for their great work. When seeing the picasa album, I knew the ice cream would win, it's the more original.