My (almost 17 year-old) sister Bri entered a photo contest sponsored by our city a few weeks ago. She was super-pumped to enter; she has always been a visual artist, but has also developed an interest in photography over the past year. Plus, the contest had cash awards for the top placing photos and what teenager doesn't want some spare money??
The competition was called Summer Blooms, which definitely inspired her. She had a variety of concepts in mind for her endeavor, though she could only select one photograph in the end. Bri planned out the details of her photoshoot for days, enlisting my (almost 15 year-old) brother and me to help and model for her. She was so intent about her vision that, because she wanted a particular color of flowers for her pictures, she went to a store to purchase a flower bouquet for the shoot. She spent a good hour (between my super-swamped brother's engineering camp and lacrosse practice) shooting her various pictures and stressing over achieving her idea of perfection. Then, even though she had swim practice the next morning at 7 a.m., she worked for hours and stayed up much past midnight as she downloaded and formatted and stressed and cried over which picture was the perfect image to give her a chance to win or place in the contest. Finally, she chose one (pictured below) and signed-sealed-delivered it to City Hall.
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| Isn't this gorgeous?? |
A few weeks went by and Bri began to anxiously check her mail and email for news about the contest results. On Tuesday, this letter* came in the mail:
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| *Names and addresses blacked out for privacy purposes |
As excited as she is that her photo will be on display in City Hall, Bri is hurt and upset by this decision. She was excited to be judged in a contest; she wanted to know how she would rank in competition with her peers...and, of course, the prospect of possibly winning a cash prize was a very enticing notion as well. What Bri is most upset about is that all of her hard work and stress and diligence with this project ended up being for naught; she doesn't think that it is right that City Hall deemed the contest aspect null and void because there were "too few entries".
From the words chosen to describe the outcome, it seems as though there were multiple entries. Princeton University's WordNet defines "contest" and "competition" (when the two are deemed synonymous) as "an occasion on which a winner is selected from among two or more contestants". There clearly seem to be two or more contestants involved in this "Youth Photography Contest"; what right does the City Arts Committee have not to choose a winner, particularly when the youth clearly made a solid effort to compete?
What do you think about this situation? Is it fair to the contestants? Do you think the City Arts Committee should be obligated to choose a winner from those who entered? Please let me know!!
Love, Leaza
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