www.ukbutterflies.co.uk

Pete Eeles wrote:

FISHiEE wrote:I see the gallery has already picked the winners. Damn I should have entered earlier!

Ignore the gallery. When there are no votes, it still goes ahead and picks the top 3 based on nothing whatsoever!

Cheers,

- Pete

I was joking. I am guessing it just listed the first 3 entries as 1st, 2nd and 3rd hence the comment.

Do think it a little bit dodgy that the judges know the photographers of the images they are judging on, but then again I'm sure for the countryfile calendar competiton and many others I've had to write my details on the back of the images and I'm sure the judges didn't make a point of not looking. Admittedly they wouldn't know me from Adam unlike in the situation here where most know everybody else.

I'm sure we can trust the judges to be honest enough to be judging on the quality of the images and to be impartial to the name below the image. It's a pretty big undertaking to organise such a competition and they've put too much into it and this website in general not to go about the judging in a suitable manner.

Also by taking on the role of judging they have taken themselves out of the competition, so that's 3 of the competition out of the running!

FISHiEE:

....they have taken themselves out of the competition, so that's 3 of the competition out of the running!....

So true - and any one of those three would have been a potential winner. Slightly devalues the status of the person who actually wins.
("Yes, you might won but Peter, Gary and Maurice didn't enter. So would you have won if they had also entered?")

You're doing a great job Pete in running ukb and you don't need flak like this. But maybe for next year, let's discuss the potential tripwires BEFORE going firm on the format.

Jack

And the waiting is over - congrats to all the winners! And thanks to everyone who entered.

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/competit ... s_2010.php

Cheers,

- Pete

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to Pete, Gary and Maurice for doing such a great job in judging. Of course all of the images are excellent, but for me, two in particular stood out. Phil Corley's Silver-studded Blue with ants is simply breath-taking. And 'hats off' to young Elliott Staley for his brilliant Chequered Skipper (Paul's is none-too-shabby either).
Neil

I think you'd be hard pushed to find any image to beat that silver studded blue. A jaw dropping shot of an amazing natural spectacle. A truly worthy winner!

I'd be interested to know if this is common of emerging Silver Studded Blues? Now I'm in Hampshire, with a colony not far away I'd be very keen to see and photograph this. I saw some emerging this summer, but never saw anything like that!

Congratulations to all the other entrants. Some really cracking shots again, and I'm quite thankful I didn't have to pick the winners out of them!

FISHiEE wrote:I'd be interested to know if this is common of emerging Silver Studded Blues?

One of the reasons for the shot being a unanimous overall winner, is that some of us have tried to capture such a shot in vain. I failed at Silchester Common (and saw 7 freshly-emerged adults without a single ant on them!) and I believe Maurice did the same with much larger numbers in, I think, the New Forest. Just an amazing shot but difficult to get!

Cheers,

- Pete

Some stunning photos all round. Well done to all the winners. It would be interesting to know whether all the winning photos were taken with dedicated macro lenses with or without flash.
Perhaps a winners' online workshop might help us lesser mortals!!

Hi Ian - some photos do include their EXIF data. So if you go to a gallery and click on the "Comments: No comments yet" (or whatever) link, you'll get to the detail page for the image.

If that image has EXIF data included, you'll see a link just below the rating labelled "EXIF-Data - show/hide". Click it to see the info. Here;s an example with EXIF data:

gallery/image_page.php?album_id=2038&im ... 9#comments

Cheers,

- Pete

I have over the years entered so many photo competitions where the judge has little appreciation for natural history photos.
The judges here should be congratulated for doing remarkably well and I am more than happy to be an also ran in the company of the winning photos. There were some stunning also rans as well in my opinion.
Well done!

thanks very much to the judges glad you liked the image so much

i did take the shot with a 100mm canon macro lens, natural light, [no flash on this image ] iso 400, f7.1 handheld
anyone wishing to shoot them needs to visit there site regularly, as they all seem to emerge in a very short time, at prees heath all within a week/and half.

all the silver studds i saw emerging did have ants helping them out of the ground, some only had a few, others up to dozen or more actually on the butterfly.
as soon as the wings are unfolded , timed at less than 4 mins in some cases! after that the ants disappear. so you only have a maximum 10 mins to see the ants on the butterfly.
most of the females were actually mating before the wings had unfolded!
the hardest part was finding one on a high enough stem to get a clean background.

i have just started uploading a few video clips on my flickr site , with females being mobbed by the males just after emerging -

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/5145080855/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/5145411281/

phil

Amazing videos to complement a most impressive still shot. This is nature in the raw that most of us are never lucky enough (or clever enough) to see.

Very nice to know that Prees Heath is doing so well.

Jack

I think the gallery had excellent taste myself in picking an SSB with ant as winner, so no need to be too dismissive ( "based on nothing whatsoever") chaps ..... I guess I was out- anted ( oh... and everything photographic besides )

PS.. congrats to all the winners

Wonderful clips there of SSBs in a mating frenzy. I must pay a visit to Prees Heath next year.

I just want to say that I have recently entered a contest in the US (where I am from) and it went on votes from other contestants. It was completely unfair because people were getting any and everyone they knew to vote for them, whether or not their photographs were actually worthy of winning. Now I am not saying that I am the best and I should have won, I will say the complete opposite. I am an amateur photographer that likes taking macro photographs as a hobby. But, I would like the same chance as anyone else to be fairly judged by people who know what they are doing and looking for. I commend this competition for having judges!!

Congrats to all the winners of the contest! Everyone had such great shots! I loved viewing them!

I was thrilled that the judges liked my photographs.
I thought the winning Silver-studded Blue was brilliantand all the other winners were too. Today I am going to go and sell my photographs at the DANES Insect Show( Derby) to help raise money for Prees Heath the only site in the Midlands that has this butterfly.
I am going to keep practising my photography, so I can get photos as good as this.
I hope to be able to go to the photo workshop next summerand to meet all the butterfly photographers again and learn some more camera skills.
Best wishes
Elliott Staley

When will the results of the competition be published?

Petera wrote:When will the results of the competition be published?

See further up in this thread....

Pete Eeles wrote:And the waiting is over - congrats to all the winners! And thanks to everyone who entered.

http://www.ukbutterflies.co.uk/competit ... s_2010.php

Cheers,

- Pete

John

Only looked at the 1st page of this thread - Doh!

Beautiful shots from the winners and a worthy winner with the ants, never knew that they helped. Nature at is best.