Throwdowns and such

[JckDanls 07]

because if I don't I'll never get better

So true... So I had/have my grandson racing Motocross for his entire life (he's 32 now) and we are/were very competitive and looking to get better... I always told him if you don't practice with the fast guys you'll never get fast yourself... Same thing Colin1230 is saying...

 

[Central PA Cowboy]

I’d love to be more active, just too busy.

 

[Brokenhandle]

There's times we are all too busy! I missed the gravy throwdown from being too busy... and I love my gravy! So I enter when I can.

Ryan

 

[BigDave11]

first, thanks to the generous sponsors and members that give their time to organize and run these. its really cool that we do this with some great prizes.

I entered one, and cooked and photographed a dish for another that i forgot to submit in time. It's tough for a bbq forum to hold a contest and judge strictly on a single picture. Its a picture contest, not a cooking/smoking/bbq contest. I think it would be cool if the community could submit idea for and vote on the theme of the contest.

maybe a good idea could be, if the theme was, say, pork ribs. you have to submit 3 pictures. 1 while its cooking, 1 after cooking, 1 with meat cut showing inside.

i think there would be more community involvement in the throwdowns if we could decide the theme and maybe revisit the rules to make it less of an instagram-esque picture contest

 

[DRKsmoking]

maybe a good idea could be, if the theme was, say, pork ribs. you have to submit 3 pictures. 1 while its cooking, 1 after cooking, 1 with meat cut showing inside.

All good ideas , BUT. That is one of the big problems most folks are talking about. The quality of their pictures they say they are having problems with. So now it would be 3 pictures they would be not happy with.

And it was in the fine print somewhere ( ha ha ) that after the throwdown voting was over and the winners announced. That you should post how your cook/smoke went. So the process was kind of documented .

I am not saying no to your ideas , as all ideas should be listened to . And the judging is done on a 3 part vote for the submitted photo of your smoked item/ meal. Depending on the theme.

David

 

[OldSmoke]

Yea, when it comes to smoking, I love to share photos, but man, I feel I am in a single A farm league!

I win every time some else posts. I have learned so much from the folks here.

Thanks!

 

[Colin1230]

Its a picture contest, not a cooking/smoking/bbq contest.

Having the Code Word in the picture pretty much validates your cook.

 

[bmudd14474]

Can there be a "at least they tried" prize? Then some of us have something to try for. Kinda like have a bit of fun with something that may not have gone right? Call it the Tom award. Then again maybe I should have had one less beer tonight...

We did this last time and still only had 10 entries.

The judges, should be us, not a selected panel, let the members decide who wins.

Viewers choice normally votes for a picture , or follows the volume of votes . That's fine . but people don't always make the right choice .

Used to be an admin vote decided one of the prizes . That way as you say other things are considered , and the point system evens out the picture effect .
I'm not sure it's like that anymore , but maybe since Brian is running it again it will go back to that .

I understand that, but why use a separate panel of judges at all?
The judges can cast their voted just like the rest of the members, a separate panel makes absolutely "0" sense.

The reason we put in a judges choice is there use to be and may still be a small group of people that would tell each other what their entries were and they would pollute the voting. So we put in the judges choice and we use 3 random judges(Who didn't enter) We set up 3 fields for it to be judges by to really drill down on the entry. Over this this turned out to serve 2 purposes. 1 made it fair. 2 gave credit for the technical skills shown and not just plating. There have been times where the best picture wasn't the judges choice.




The whole purpose of this was to get information to try to make it better.


Would doing a thread or a youtube video on plating be helpful?

 

[Brokenhandle]

I'm gonna repeat myself, and throw Jeff, jcam222 back into the spotlight... Jeff, if you can find some of your first pics you posted when you first joined, please share. Many of you know the quality of pics Jeff has posted in his threads. But I've had the conversation with him a long time ago about his great pictures, he then shared his first pics... man, what a difference! If he can practice and learn how to take amazing pictures, anyone here can!

Ryan

 

[Torch&Tone]

Would doing a thread or a youtube video on plating be helpful?

There are already heaps of videos and beginner's guides out there on food presentation and photography that are very easy to find and learn from, but some users here won't even search this site for answers to their questions... so, maybe?

I would not expect much impact on the quality of photographs, but I imagine it would get some responses (lots of modesty and continued complaints about their equipment/set-up, but at least those complaints might get a little more sophisticated? "My phone sucks at photos" → "My phone has limited f-stop settings and inadequate dynamic range").

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We did this last time and still only had 10 entries.

At least they were 10 pretty solid entries... How hard do you want voting to be?? j/k

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Putting the TD in the carousel is good, but maybe go farther in making it a little more prominent, a little more... sticky?... to remind folks that submissions are still open? Maybe give Throwdown some of the unused real estate left of the search bar, or perhaps in the sub-header bar (next to "Jeff's Products"), but in a different color and, importantly, only while the TD is active, to avoid attention fatigue:

Other than that, I guess make the judging criteria clear - each time - so users don't jump to conclusions about photo quality (or submitter's popularity) being the sole determinant.

 

[Colin1230]

Would doing a thread or a youtube video on plating be helpful?

Yes, I think so.
Here at SMF we have so many experts on so many other cooking topics why not have a thread on 'Tips and Tricks for Plating and Photographing'?

 

[DougE]

Would doing a thread or a youtube video on plating be helpful?

To some, maybe, but if you ain't got an artistic ability that makes a plate just say, "WOW", it's not a big help. I've watched a ton of videos on plating, and, well, I still plate like crap lol.

It's all good, though, I'm not big on competitive cooking and would rather just post the occasional cook, and how I did it.

 

[jcam222]

I'm gonna repeat myself, and throw Jeff, jcam222 back into the spotlight... Jeff, if you can find some of your first pics you posted when you first joined, please share. Many of you know the quality of pics Jeff has posted in his threads. But I've had the conversation with him a long time ago about his great pictures, he then shared his first pics... man, what a difference! If he can practice and learn how to take amazing pictures, anyone here can!

Ryan

I'll see what I can dig up later this week

 

[bigfurmn]

We did this last time and still only had 10 entries.

Seriously? I'm sorry. I was just trying to make a joke about my poor showing.

 

[civilsmoker]

Just for some reference here is what my food pics looked like 16 years ago....

14 years ago.....

12 years ago...

9 years ago.... Got a new iPhone....The ones above were with a full body fuji digital....as an FYI, the pic below is when I started moving the camera back and zooming in to avoid light shadows....

Last Weekend......I am holding my phone about 30 inches above and zoom in to about a 2.2 zoom or so......illuminated by 3000K LED under counter light bars

FYI, I just looked and have taken over 14K pictures (2/3rds are food pics....I have a problem....) in the last 15 years via my iPhone...... Practice practice practice.......