Mar 10 2010

The top 30 is back! Final SPW intake of 09.

Jose Fernandez

Our apologies for a delay in posting the final Top 30 of 2009. We’re blaming lots of things, but mainly Christmas holidays, travel, too much eating and definitely drinking, children, pets, photo shoots and technical issues. We hope it’s worth the wait.

Every time I sit down to run through this editing process I am astounded by the number of quality images presented by those, who only 8 weeks earlier knew NOTHING about photography.

This time we started with 1480 images which were presented on the final night ( wk 8 ) by each of the students. The first edit was easy, as images were selected based on initial impact. Basically, they stood out from the rest of the pack. Within a few hours the 180 were whittled down to 60 as we lost a great number to critical (or general) focus issues and slightly sloppy composition. From there things really slowed down, we compared, discussed and even argued over each image, and it’s merits.

This final selection was based on, originality of idea, overall impact of image (mood), use of colour and composition, and technical execution.

Congratulations to all those who made the final cut! I feel most would agree that these images hold their own on most gallery walls around town.