flaflwrgrl said:It's TOOOOOOOOOOOOOO hard! I'm hating myself for dumping fabulous photos. Not fair!

ctcarol said:That last category was the toughest! I had a dozen stared in the first couple of minutes. I hated having to reject so many excellent photos to get down to three!

Indeed!
I do find it very painful having to reject, as you say, so many excellent photos.

I am thrilled that the bugs and birds and whatever other critter category had the most entries! I love those
And to think, we almost didn't have a category for that last year.
I think we can conclude that it is popular
Oh so very difficult to 'reject' at least 30 of them though!

I do kinda wish the initial voting was more like we had it with the various plant weeks--thumb as many as you like and here are the top 20, or whatever number, most thumbed images--so much less personal agony that way... heck, I'd be thrilled with a brief, free-for-all first wave and then be much more content to have limited votes among the final contenders. Of course, I'd hate to suggest anything that would drag out the process. I'd be thrilled with more votes too.

Maybe, just maybe, we could think about broaching the subject of voting mods for another year?

dirtdorphins said:




I am thrilled that the bugs and birds and whatever other critter category had the most entries! I love those
And to think, we almost didn't have a category for that last year.
I think we can conclude that it is popular
Oh so very difficult to 'reject' at least 30 of them though!

I do kinda wish the initial voting was more like we had it with the various plant weeks--thumb as many as you like and here are the top 20, or whatever number, most thumbed images--so much less personal agony that way... heck, I'd be thrilled with a brief, free-for-all first wave and then be much more content to have limited votes among the final contenders. Of course, I'd hate to suggest anything that would drag out the process. I'd be thrilled with more votes too.

Maybe, just maybe, we could think about broaching the subject of voting mods for another year?

gardengus said:

If the photographer added a caption it will appear after the voting.

If there were no identifying info, such as location, name, etc. than I think it would be good to share that for the voting.

This is horrendously difficult to judge. So many beautiful photos of the plants and flowers - some are perfect photos for a guide book or identifying plants, some incorporated the topic into the landscape. Some seemed to be in the wrong category and some probably are but...here in the south we often contain a wisteria vine by shaping it as a tree, so that worked; surprised to see some echinaceas in the wildflower AND natives so I looked it up and lo and behold, it's a native. DH has entered many photography contests and thinking back on that and the difficulty in choosing between them all, I chose composition, focus, lighting as parts of the winnowing process. That meant the fox and the apple (one of my favorites) got dinged on focus although wildlife (especially fast-moving wildlife) is often hard to get in focus. My sincere apologies to the photographer but know that I loved it.
We have so many talented people, not only in photography, but also in GROWING these beautiful plants. Thank you all for showing them off to us!

Barb

What other category would fit that wisteria vine? It is clearly a shrub as it grows in the photo. At least it seems like it to me. Vines are sort of hard anyway, aren't they? Wisteria isn't the only woody vine that can be trained to shrubby habits. Vines can also be groundcovers, trailing potted plants, annuals or perennials. But in the case of the wisteria depicted here, it's in the correct category. I'd think vines might easily find a home among a lot of the categories depending on its growth and how it's used.

Wisterias can be trained into a tree form. Many old ones are free standing. Never really thought about them as a vine/tree or whatever. I was going to put a picture of mine in the Trees Shrubs category, but although it was blooming beautiful it wasn't really a good enough picture with the patio grill in the background.

Another thing to consider is that normally, when things are to be judged subjectively, instructions are given to those doing the judging.

So, question: when I'm voting "best in show", what am I voting for? What's "best"?

(of course the answer here is whatever I like best... but we don't need a contest to find that out - nor do any of you care what is MY favorite... so the question remains.)

CDsSister said:It is going to take me a while to go through these. I do love the Trees and Shrubs but then again I have a thing about tree pictures.
Wonder what that means?

There are people that are in the know about you Marilyn...

Those are tears of laughter.

When there's over 200 pics in a catergory, that takes too long and how can you decide at the end? So I didn't vote!

I just enjoyed each and every photo, checked those that really caught my eye, then went back for the final 3 with a more critical eye on the photography (not that I'm any sort of expert). It was fun. And perhaps we'll have more categories next year to make it easier, who knows.