Blood in the Snow
So I've got this Lego hobby. Y'all know that. Periodically in some of the Flickr groups in which I participate, people will hold a challenge or contest of one sort or another. The purpose is to inspire people to build and foster community involvement, but there are sometimes great prizes awarded as well.
One of the themes in which I build is post-apoc, and the ApocaLego group is my home for that. A couple months ago, one of the mods announced a contest called Blood in the Snow, where the purpose was to build a scene that depicted post-apoc life after civilization ended in an ice age. The premise of the contest was inspiring enough to break weeks of builder's block for me, and in a single day I built and photographed what I think may be one of my best works yet, which I titled Bird's Eye. It was an experiment in forced perspective, and it worked better than I'd hoped--it's been my most popular photo by far, and ended up getting blogged on The Brothers Brick, which is kind of a big deal (and drives a lot of traffic).
The deadline for the contest was last night.
I have tried very hard--successfully, I think--to be a good sport throughout the entire thing, but false modesty does not suit me: I believe mine is the strongest entry by far. Compositionally, photographically, artistically, technically, and in terms of originality and conveying the feeling of life after the snowpocalypse. And in terms of statistics, until this week it had more page views and favorites (someone marking it as a favorite) than the rest of the field combined. It's tough to maintain humility with that in mind.
Nevertheless, I expected there to be a rush of last-minute entries, and indeed there have been some very strong entries in the last week or so. After poring over the entry thread, I think I've narrowed it down to four which I think are truly competitive. Two of them I think have at least an even chance of taking first place, the other two I doubt would beat my entry but are still good enough that it wouldn't shock me much if they did. I feel confident in predicting that the top three that place will be among these five. So here is my entry, followed by the four other contenders. All of these have backstories of one sort or another if you click through to the photo page.
One of the themes in which I build is post-apoc, and the ApocaLego group is my home for that. A couple months ago, one of the mods announced a contest called Blood in the Snow, where the purpose was to build a scene that depicted post-apoc life after civilization ended in an ice age. The premise of the contest was inspiring enough to break weeks of builder's block for me, and in a single day I built and photographed what I think may be one of my best works yet, which I titled Bird's Eye. It was an experiment in forced perspective, and it worked better than I'd hoped--it's been my most popular photo by far, and ended up getting blogged on The Brothers Brick, which is kind of a big deal (and drives a lot of traffic).
The deadline for the contest was last night.
I have tried very hard--successfully, I think--to be a good sport throughout the entire thing, but false modesty does not suit me: I believe mine is the strongest entry by far. Compositionally, photographically, artistically, technically, and in terms of originality and conveying the feeling of life after the snowpocalypse. And in terms of statistics, until this week it had more page views and favorites (someone marking it as a favorite) than the rest of the field combined. It's tough to maintain humility with that in mind.
Nevertheless, I expected there to be a rush of last-minute entries, and indeed there have been some very strong entries in the last week or so. After poring over the entry thread, I think I've narrowed it down to four which I think are truly competitive. Two of them I think have at least an even chance of taking first place, the other two I doubt would beat my entry but are still good enough that it wouldn't shock me much if they did. I feel confident in predicting that the top three that place will be among these five. So here is my entry, followed by the four other contenders. All of these have backstories of one sort or another if you click through to the photo page.