Now you can take images like the Wigan 10

Last week I spent an interesting half-hour looking at 54 images from Wigan 10 winning panels on the PAGB website (as you do). I thought I would try to do some sort of "back-of-the-envelope" analysis of their work, and try to shed some light on their consistent winning formula. To my surprise, the results do show a consistency:

1. •40 featured people as the main subject. Of these,16 were portraits (but never obviously taken in a studio) with 13 "character" portraits (ethnic, aged, goths etc) and 20 of these were sport/action photographs.
   

2. •11 featured domestic or wild animals (some with people: huskies, dog racing etc).
   

3. •8 used obvious digital/creative effects.
   

4. •2 were action seascapes.
   

There are general trends with the all the images:

1. 1.Evenly lit, not contrasty with no borderline shadows or highlights (So no "fine on monitor, burnt out/blocked up when projected" issues)
   

2. 2.Faultless, highly selective focus.
   

3. 3.Frozen action (3 sport photos had added motion blur).
   

4. 4.The main subject is unmistakable and dominates the frame.
   

5. 5.Backgrounds only set the context for the subject. Background distractions are absent either by composition or framing, or by selective focus. There are no distracting highlights.
   

However, this is most surprising: natural landscapes, urban/industrial landscapes, plants/flowers, still-life, transport, "macro", photo-documentary (apart from 2 contrived). Not a single one!

Obviously these reflect the interests of the Wigan 10's members, but how many people shots do we see in club/WPF competitions? I'm not for one moment suggesting that this is the way to go or that we should try to copy them. Everyone should continue to develop their own style and produce images that please them, but I certainly think this is food for thought as they are obviously very successful at producing images to catch the judges' eye.

Phil Ray