Stan's Shots: 2014

magine scrolling past each and every single image to find the awesome ones. Once these are found, they’re opened up in another tab. When all of the photos have been looked at, I move on to my selections and weed out the weakest images. I used to judge the contests solo, but in recent times I’ve brought Managing Editor Julius Motal on to help. With the Phottix portrait contest, we looked at the final batch together and made a decision. In fact, he picked the winning image and I supported his decision.

In general, what happens is I scroll past images and find the ones that stand out at me. When images are that small as you see in the lead image of this article, something needs to be truly uncanny to stick out. Typically, we find around 20 or so uncanny images.

An Inside Look at How We Judge Photo Contests

A small group of us visited Kaniakapu'pu, King Kamehameha's Summer Palace, to do a group photo shoot. On the second day of the new year we were to meet on site at 9am. I ran late so had to catch up with everyone...or so I thought.
When I arrived they were still setting up so I jumped right in.

Initially I worked with Alyzza. She brought several outfits 3 of which I was able to photograph her in. Alyzza's so easy to shoot, she needs minimal direction and moves very well between shots.

Arianna had never modeled before, she actually was there to keep her friend MacKenzie company. But once she got into things she shined. She learns quickly and takes direction well.