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The photo results have been announced by the organizing committee quite some time ago. We at Lensa, we’re given the honor of judging this photo contest on behalf of NISE, which stands for Nisa’ Nasheed Extravaganza. In this article, we’d like too point out the winning factor in each of the photographs and improvements that could be done. Lensa hopes that by doing this, we would all get to learn something new, and nothing makes us grin more than by receiving a previous entrant in a photo contest, and seeing that their skills and creativity has improved ; ) . Hope you guys dig this article.

We’ll start with Winner, and that goes to : Alia Salleh

with her caption: Happiness: If you stop searching through the snow, You’ll never stumble upon the blossoming flowers scattered in its midst.

True to the theme of this years NISE, which is, “Purity from within”, Alia managed to show the concept of purity emerging, in the case of her picture its yellow flowers emerging from a blanket of snow ( which suggest the human spirit untarnished by outside influence and as babies we are born pure ). Miss Alia also showed that she put some thought in deciding which subject she wanted to appear stand out of the frame, through her good use of depth of field, shallow DOF (keeping the front flower in focus). Overall a splendid photograph, but could have been better if she cropped the subject more tighter thus leaving behind the unwanted black blurred image of the flowers in the background. That would have given her subject more attention. As demonstrated below:

1st runner up goes to: Mahfuzah Zainol

with her caption:

Layang-layang terputus tali, Tali terputus menari-nari, Keikhlasan hati terpancar berseri, Harta dunia kita berkongsi

Putus tali terbang tinggi, Layang-layang lupa diri, Erti hidup pada memberi, Apa erti jika tidak peduli

In this winning photograph by Mahfuzah, the theme ‘Purity from within’ is clearly shown through the girl giving charity. I chose this image because the human spirit is evident and is reached across to the viewer. The viewer feels connected and is able to relate back to the image. And to me that makes a winning picture. I can also see that the image has been given a blurred effect (maybe photoshop)  to emphasize and focus on the subjects. To me that indicates initiative on her behalf to try and communicate her point across. To each his own, as i’d like to say. On improvements, i would say that maybe changing it to black and white would eliminate all the colours that might distract the viewer from the emotions trying to get across. exmple pic below:

2nd runner up goes to: Nur Aqilah Mohd Hadari

with her caption:  The purest and sincerest form of submission is one done without others attention. Such as how plants by the roadside are always reciting zikr but never paid much attention.

I liked how her caption perfectly captures what the image shows. The caption played an important role in making this image a winner from the others. Its easy to make an image of nothing, but with the caption, she gave this image context and content. Similarly in photojournalism, without reading the caption, there are some images that we cant appreciate or understand, but fully understand the meaning of the image  just by reading the caption, which could be just a few or even one word. To further improve her image, Nur’ Aqilah could try to change her angle so that her background image would be less distracting (less black murky background). Maybe this image could also work with trying out a more creative composition, arrangement of subjects, or even some slight motion captured in the plants ; ).

All in all it has been great fun seeing the creative photos we’ve received. We at Lensa congratulate all the winners in this years NISE photo competition, and to us there are no losers, only more opportunity to win next time around ; ) Enjoi learning guys ; )

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