Competition is an interesting thing.  For people, it’s mostly about having a good time pitting themselves in some way against other people to see how they stack up.  As we’ll see, for other living things on this planet, competition can be a life and death struggle.

So, let’s get right to it.

Teresita joins us for the first time by way of Robin’s blog to show us a running boy competing for his school.  She mentions she was experimenting with her camera.  Her experiment in panning came out with just enough sharpness on the subject with blurring in the background and arms and legs to show the speed of the runner.

If anything this assignment did, it got Karma to visit her state fair for the first time in a decade. 🙂  She found, as I did, a diversity of competitions at the Big E and probably ate some fried foods along the way, too.

My downstate blogging mate, Debbie, drummed up a bit of high school soccer (that’s football to my European readers) competition by photographing a couple of hard fought matches. Good action and intensity was shown by the girls.

Dawn shared with us a running event from start to finish.  Having done some of these myself, she did an excellent job of showing us not only the competition but the feelings of such an event.  Maybe next year we’ll see Dawn out there!

How can I say Michaela’s submission is cheating?  I, too, loved playing with my race car sets (oh, I went through a few of them) when I was young.  Of course, it’s competition.  Especially since it got Dad to play, too!

Of course, I much prefer Nye’s race car submission as she took her camera and family out to the old Hickory Motor Speedway in North Carolina.  As a fan of NASCAR for years, I have seen several big time racers make it big after starting their careers at Hickory. Nye mixed in action shots, photos of the winners and, as always, a lovely portrait of her daughter, this time sporting fashionable ear protection. 😀

Truels shares with us a football match (that’s soccer to my United States readers) with some great facial expressions from the competitors.  I bet he found it easier to photograph this game with his new dSLR camera, too.

While I could have used some of the competition photos I took at my state’s fair, I knew of an annual competition which was upcoming at local festival featuring kids, grease, poles, bell ringing and a time clock I thought would be much more fun and very unique to photograph.

In the natural world, competition is fierce just to stay alive.  If you are a tree, light is your main source of energy and Amy-Lynn shows and tells us how trees have adapted to make sure they win in their game of life.

Normally I get one or two late entries.  They are posted a few hours or within a day.  However, Barabara came in three days late!  If it was not about cake and rice krispie treats, I might not have allowed it. 😉

I want to thank all of you for participating in this assignment. I enjoyed seeing what each of you choose to use in showing competition.  Concepts can be hard to photograph.

The skill you are all showing these days is phenomenal from showing motion, using macro, story telling photography, use of photo essays and so on.  We have all come a long ways in the last three years since I started these assignments.  I have learned so much from each of you.  Thanks, again, and I hope you’ll all join in this November for the last one for 2011.

Oh, almost last.  I have not forgotten about the Four Seasons assignment which is due on the 28th of December.