The photo competition results will be out, shortly.

Paul had placed an onerous responsibility on me to judge the photos from a more critical angle irrespective of the fact that the results have been declared by him, based on popular vote.

As a judge, I’ve tried my best to judge the photos objectively, without favour or prejudice. I’ve not allowed any extraneous factors to influence my judgement except the 26 photos that were before me.

Judging such a huge number of photos was definitely not easy, in fact it was quite tricky. But a job had to be done and I had to focus all my energies towards this objective. As you all are well aware, critical selection is much more difficult than voting a winner.

While judging the photos I felt that clubbing Sunrises and Sunsets and placing them on the same pedestal for judging would be a little unfair. Sunrises, by their very nature cannot be compared to Sunsets. The morning conditions in most cases would be quite different from the evening conditions. Most Sunrises do not come out well due to various factors such as early morning haze, lack of resources available at that time of the day, not enough time to prepare for the Sunrise, etc.

Therefore, I have taken the liberty to select winners under two categories, i.e., Sunrise and Sunset. Of course, there are more photos under Sunset and this fact has also been taken into consideration.

In view of the above, I shall be announcing first, second, and third place under Sunrise category and first, second, third, fourth, and fifth place under the Sunset category. Apart from that, I shall also announce 12 consolation prize winners whose photos had a lot to offer but sadly missed out narrowly.

A lot of thought and analysis has gone into selection of all the winners, but, in a competition like this, some will win and some will lose. All those participants whose name does not figure in my list of winners does not in any way imply that their photos were not good enough… all the photos were really good, but I had to follow a certain set of parameters to select the winners. I hope people who do not agree with my judgement will realise my predicament.

Let me, however, make it clear that the judge’s decision is final and no appeal, from any quarters, will be entertained under any circumstances.

Thanks for being patient, and reading to the end :)

~mbf~

p.s. Watch this space for the winners to be announced shortly.