Photo Contest - Bad Picture (10/4-10/10)

[ZapperZ]

Bad Picture!

This time, the theme is pictures that did not turn out, technically, as well as it should. Overexposed, underexposed, too dark, blurry, finger-in-picture, etc. all qualify. Note: such accidents should not be done deliberately just to qualify for this contest! So go through your picture collection and hope that you didn't delete all the didn't-turn-out-so-well pictures that you took.

The voting for this contest should be interesting. Do you vote for the worst looking picture? Or best-looking bad picture?



Contest Rules:

1. Any digital photo or digitally-scanned photo relevant to the theme will be accepted within the contest period. In case there's a grey area, or you're not sure if the picture is suitable, check with me first.

2. Please resize your digital photo to no more than 650 x 490 pixels. You may also crop your picture if you wish. But other than that, any form of picture editing or modification is not allowed. This is a photo contest, not a picture editing/special effect contest. You may add a watermark or your name/nickname to the photo for identification purposes.

3. Upload your photos to any of the photo servers such as imageshack. Then post it the relevant contest thread and link your picture using the img command. PM me if you do not know how.

4. Only ONE picture per member per contest.

5. At the end of the contest period, I will open a poll and every PF member can vote for the picture they like best.

6. Note that in case we have a large number of entries, I will do the polling in more than one thread. If that's the case, you can vote in each of the polling threads. The photos will be assigned in the the polling threads in the order they were submitted.

7. These pictures must be something that you took, not something taken off someone else's photo albums or taken by someone else. I have no way of checking if you did this, so we'll go by the honor system.

8. You can use a picture only once. Once it is used in a contest, it cannot be reused in another contest.

9. Please post only pictures meant for submission in this thread.

Zz.

 

[neutrino]

Great! Now, EVERYONE will be able to participate, and we're going to have a terrible time trying to vote for the "baddest" picture.

 

[ZapperZ]

Great! Now, EVERYONE will be able to participate, and we're going to have a terrible time trying to vote for the "baddest" picture.

That's the whole idea!



Zz.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

I did 1 unit of photography, I found it fun, but doing work in it was lame I would rather do it for fun then slave over getting perfect develops etc. If I had a scanner I could upload like a trillion classic stuff ups.

(The worst would have to be having a decent picture but stuffing up the developing process by not cleaning your hands and smudging them all over the picture >.<)

 

[turbo]

Since I throw away most of my bad images, I'll have to fudge a bit and use one that is actually pretty good. Here is a photograph of the night sky taken through my 80mm Vernonscope APO - a killer tool in the hands of a skilled astrophotograper such as myself. Note the full-frame coverage of the 35mm film, the inky black sky, the flawless guiding, and the careful avoidance of stray light that could otherwise have caused lens flare and washout. In fairness, I should point out that this otherwise wonderful shot was contaminated by the presence of a meteor at the upper right. Sometimes even when you do everything right, nature sneaks in and spoils your shot.

http://img178.imageshack.us/img178/33/badcu4.jpg

 

[larkspur]

No explanation needed...
http://img174.imageshack.us/img174/5774/badphotoiy3.jpg

 

[GeoMike]

Don't hike while intoxicated...
http://www.mcschell.com/blur.jpg
Actually, don't forget to take the camera off shutter priority when you go back into the shady woods.

-GeoMike-

 

[Integral]

My impressionist photo of flowers.

Lesson: Don't try to hand hold 1/6s!

http://home.comcast.net/~integral50/scenery/Impressionist2.JPG

 

[Moonbear]

Wait, wait, I forgot to get my water picture in...is that already over? Has it already been a whole week since that was posted?!

Okay, I'm sure I can come up with BAD pictures! I just have to get to the scanner when the cat isn't following me around (since digital photography, the worst of the worst are only on film).

 

[turbo]

Moonie, GeoMike, Larkspur, Integral, what the hell are you doing? Do you not recognize the absolutely overpowering stench of my entry? I have squatted, strained mightily, and delivered the most offensive offering that a photographer can hope to poot forth (to quote Frank Zappa). Breathe deep the complex pungency of my contribution and despair in your inadequacy!

 

[larkspur]

Moonie, GeoMike, Larkspur, Integral, what the hell are you doing? Do you not recognize the absolutely overpowering stench of my entry? I have squatted, strained mightily, and delivered the most offensive offering that a photographer can hope to poot forth (to quote Frank Zappa). Breathe deep the complex pungency of my contribution and despair in your inadequacy!

 

[larkspur]

Turbo, at first look i thought yours was a flubbed fundus photo. IIRC you used to work somewhere in the ophthalmic photography field didn't you?

 

[turbo]

Turbo, at first look i thought yours was a flubbed fundus photo. IIRC you used to work somewhere in the ophthalmic photography field didn't you?

Yes, and I used to repair the fundus cameras, as well as calibrate the surgical lasers, and sweep the floors. OK , maybe not the floors, but it sometimes felt like I had a LOT of hats on the rack (as well as being the network administrator and an ABO-certified optician).

 

[larkspur]

Yes, and I used to repair the fundus cameras, as well as calibrate the surgical lasers, and sweep the floors. OK , maybe not the floors, but it sometimes felt like I had a LOT of hats on the rack (as well as being the network administrator and an ABO-certified optician).

Wow that was a lot of hats!

 

[turbo]

Wow that was a lot of hats!

I also had to lubricate and balance the phoroptors of a couple of the senior partners (they were all opthalmologists with surgical specialties) because I "did it better" than the other person in the practice that had done this for 10 years previously, and make up digitized slide presentations of surgical procedures that I never want to see again.

And by the way, your observation was very astute, because that is almost exactly the color of a fundus photo.

 

[Astronuc]

Don't hike while intoxicated...
http://www.mcschell.com/blur.jpg
Actually, don't forget to take the camera off shutter priority when you go back into the shady woods.

Pretty cool! Reminds me the good ol' times, long, long ago.

 

[turbo]

Pretty cool! Reminds me the good ol' times, long, long ago.

Ah, psilocibin! The 'room with a view.

 

[turbo]

Actually, the kid has a rare quantum-level disorder: Non-Collapsing Wavefunction Syndrome : you can't pin him down even by looking at him.

Look! I can catch my hand! (RP, RIP)

 

[ZapperZ]

Er.. scorpa! You have that problem with the size again!

Zz.

 

[Chi Meson]

Our trip to the Harvard Physics building

 

[scorpa]

Ah sorry Zz I will fix it right away. I have no idea why it worked perfectly for all the other contests and now suddenly they are showing up so large. Maybe my computer settings somehow got changed on me?

 

[DaveC426913]

Our trip to the Harvard Physics building

This should serve as a warning to other parents to not let your kid play near the 1 million gauss electromagnet.

 

[turbo]

Scorpa, here is a link to GIMP 2, an open-source graphics program that does almost anything that Photoshop does (at least at the basic levels that you or I might use it for).

http://www.gimp.org/

 

[scorpa]

Thanks Turbo I'll check that out

 

[ZapperZ]

When I first started with using a digital camera, the most frustrating part was taking night shots. You just can't use the auto setting of the camera to get any decent picture, and you need to use a tripod, or at least some stable base.

This picture is one of the mistakes I made along the way. It was hand-held and the exposure was way too long. The result is not a picture of a fireworks, but more like a portal to another dimension of the universe.

Zz.

 

[0TheSwerve0]

My sister backflipping out of our mother's clutches lol

 

[turbo]

This picture is one of the mistakes I made along the way. It was hand-held and the exposure was way too long. The result is not a picture of a fireworks, but more like a portal to another dimension of the universe.

Zz.

That is a very pretty "mistake" - all mistakes should look so nice!

 

[Moonbear]

Okay, with all the bad photos I have, I can't miss this contest! Though, as with all the others, I had trouble deciding. I decided to go with one of the two that took me a few moments to figure out which way was up!

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6195/halloweenuu9.jpg

This was from when I was in college and only had a really crappy camera (not that I think a good camera would have helped much). We had a contest to decorate our dorm hallways for Halloween, and this one was taken just before judging began, when we turned off all the lights save for a few flashlights. We won the contest, but had to take everything down about a half hour later when the fire inspector found out about it.

I want to post the photos that actually show some of the decorations (none of them are very good either), but since you can actually SEE the decorations in them, I decided they weren't bad enough for this contest.

At least now I finally have a real chance to show off my true photography skills.

 

[Moonbear]

That is a very pretty "mistake" - all mistakes should look so nice!

I have to admit that I too have a fondness for squiggly fireworks. I wish they could do that with the actual fireworks! It's truly sad when one of Zz's worst photos is what some of us (waves hand) would have posted as a "good" photo. Sorry, Zz, you're out of your league in this competition. Just look at my mastery of graininess, and underexposure, and all the wrong colors, and I have no idea what those two stripes are or the things that look like cauldrons burning on the floor, because there were no cauldrons burning.

 

[ZapperZ]

I have to admit that I too have a fondness for squiggly fireworks. I wish they could do that with the actual fireworks! It's truly sad when one of Zz's worst photos is what some of us (waves hand) would have posted as a "good" photo. Sorry, Zz, you're out of your league in this competition. Just look at my mastery of graininess, and underexposure, and all the wrong colors, and I have no idea what those two stripes are or the things that look like cauldrons burning on the floor, because there were no cauldrons burning.

You're wrong! My picture is BAD, BAD I tell ya!

:)

Zz.

 

[Andre]

http://home.wanadoo.nl/bijkerk/sparrow.JPG

So here is that sparrow sitting on a pile of stones, minding his own business with something to bite. So you sneak a bit closer but when you press the shutter, the silence is broken and there it goes, a ghost in the corner.

 

[BobG]

I don't really think this photo is that bad. It's just one of those photos you look at years later and wonder, "Why?" ...

... and wonder the "Where's the bidet?", of course.

http://img236.imageshack.us/img236/2002/nobidetwq6.jpg

 

[brewnog]

... and wonder the "Where's the bidet?", of course.

Forget the bidet, where's the toilet paper?!

 

[ZapperZ]

As a reminder, you have less than 2 days left to submit a picture for this contest.

Zz.

 

[Moonbear]

Forget the bidet, where's the toilet paper?!

Well, surely that's the shower handle up on the wall above it. It's the bathroom of the future, you can do all three S's while standing in one place.