Why Does National Geographic Love This Photo?
In 2014 National Geographic invited photographers from around the world to submit photos in three categories: People, Places, and Nature. We received 9,289 entries from amateur and professional photographers from more than 150 countries.
Digital General Manager Keith Jenkins, along with
National Geographic contributing photographers John Stanmeyer and Erika Larsen, will judge this year's photo contest.
Click here to read more about the winners of the 2014 National Geographic Photo Contest.
Transcript
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: This is a really hardcore tight edit, as
it should be.
John Stanmeyer OFF-CAMERA: I want to feel a photograph. I
want it to touch me emotionally.
Erika Larsen OFF-CAMERA: Of course there’s visual beauty,
but I want to go one more layer. I want
to be able to live inside of it.
Keith Jenkins OFF-CAMERA: A lot of what we talk about when we try to
explain why we like it gets very intellectual.
But often it’s that first gut reaction, “Wow, that’s cool” or “Wow,
that’s interesting”.
JOHN STANMEYER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHER:
I think today’s edit was really more of looking at the cream that sort of has already
risen. And why they fall to the editing
floor, it maybe didn’t work well. There
was something a little better.
ERIKA LARSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER:
I think what makes an image go from beautiful and good to
great, um, I think just first and foremost it’s technical. I mean, that’s the base level. It just has to be technically be executed
well.
ERIKA LARSEN SOT: I
like it but when I see it here the quality, even if whatever they’re focusing
on, I think the quality looks really awful. I don’t think it would hold up at
all. So I’m going to go with no.
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: For me, the guy with the orange shirt to
the left of the net. His shirts clipping
the thing. A photograph like this has
got to be like a chess board, where everything is there and there’s no
foreground. You know, sometimes it just
doesn’t happen.
KEITH JENKINS, GENERAL MANAGER-DIGITAL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC :
Well, I think each judging panel is a little different. And it’s really about the chemistry between
all of the judges.
JOHN STANMEYER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHER:
I have a huge respect and appreciation for Erika Larsen’s
photography. And I have a huge respect
and appreciation for Keith Jenkin’s weight and measure in the publishing world
in photography. So there was a very
excellent gears that all meshed in the process.
And I didn’t think that the debates were hot or contested. There was a lot of great humor that played
out.
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: I was drawn to it, by the way.
ERIKA LARSEN SOT: Who
picked this?
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: I did not! Keith?
ERIKA LARSEN SOT:
Keith, did you pick this?
KEITH SOT: I don’t know…
ERIKA LARSEN SOT: It
looks like Tom Cruise in Top Gun
(laughs).
KEITH JENKINS, GENERAL MANAGER-DIGITAL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC :
The one way I find that’s always effective sometimes in
judging situations is just to ask somebody to look at a picture again. Because that opens up the possibility of, you
know, taking a different look, a different take.
ERIKA LARSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER:
When I got to hear John or Keith speak about why they did or
didn’t like them, it made me think. It
challenges your perspective on why you-, why you were attracted to it to begin
with.
ERIKA LARSEN SOT:
Well, it’s up to you guys. I told
you why I like it but I think you two could argue against why I like it more,
too.
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: No, I agree with everything you’re
saying. 101% of it. Um, I just think it’s missing one tiny aspect
that jettisons it into unbelievable composition.
ERIKA LARSEN SOT: I
don’t know. I think it is beautiful
composition. I could live again and
again and again in there. I think they’re beautiful. They’re like having a little bit of a dance
there. And then there’s all this
color. To me, people are just going in
one direction and the other. This is
where the color works so beautifully.
It’s intense here and soft here.
It doesn’t look Photoshopped. It
looks…great.
JOHN STANMEYER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHER:
I think every photograph, every image to some extent had its
merit and had its weight and had its measure.
It’s just in the end, certain moments and certain images really touched
us and touched me.
ERIKA LARSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER:
Yeah, where’s this picture of the owl. I mean, from the moment I got it in the first
set of edits it was really magical. It
was a moment I don’t get to see owls in that way. I looked and said, “Wow, you brought me to
see an animal in a way I never have seen and will probably won’t get to see.”
The top images were great.
JOHN STANMEYER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHER:
The wildebeest picture, you know, springs to mind as
something that had enough subtlety in it that we might have missed it had we
not had that other conversation about taking the whole image and letting it
kind of soak over you and then seeing what’s really in the frame.
ERIKA LARSEN, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHER:
And then the picture on the train. Everyone look really peaceful but at the same
time it just looks really surreal and something, you know, other-worldly.
KEITH JENKINS, GENERAL MANAGER-DIGITAL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC :
It was really the balance between the individual and the
mass. And then do it in a very poetic
way with color and light. The overall
tone of it was just very relaxing in what was a very chaotic scene. There were a lot of things playing off of
each other.
JOHN STANMEYER SOT: I felt there were a lot of great things
that you would like on Facebook in this whole thing.
JOHN STANMEYER, NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC CONTRIBUTING
PHOTOGRAPHER:
I talked a lot about the Facebook element because that is an
ubiquitous terms and a reality that we are all interacting in. I like that tree. I like that light. I like that dress. I like that photograph. It’s a very, very simple but now becoming quite
a very powerful statement. All these
things we call social media—what I like to call self-publishing—is driven by
visuals.
KEITH JENKINS, GENERAL MANAGER-DIGITAL NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC :
I think the argument that somehow the proliferation of
cameras attached to cell phones is somehow lowering the standards I think is
totally refuted. We are communicating
visually much more so than we ever have before and I think that’s a good
thing.