The third series of the Reason To Fly competition began as usual with a vote for the first subject. The choice was between White Lines, Landscapes without Buildings or Mazes. The subjects for the poll were randomly selected from a list of suggestions supplied by the members and a link to the automated randomizer provided for those who were interested.
The competition proper started on Sunday October 3rd with Landscapes without Buildings the winner amongst the 35 people who voted.
Although the competition is run for the benefit of the members, with subjects chosen by them and winning images selected by a poll of the members there was a problem. Shell shock had set in during the interminable seven-week slog of the GADC 4th Birthday Challenge and Treasure Hunt.
The Challenge contestants had spent much of their time searching out esoteric and bizarre combinations of objects according to a comprehensive but barely comprehensible set of rules enforced with draconian efficiency by a humourless and unyielding panel of judges.Rather than the carefree days of the McMac era the RTF was expected to be ruled in the same joyless manner.
On several occasions the bewildered contestants had to be reassured that, if their image showed a tiny building in the distance, it was neither cause for immediate expulsion nor would any horrendous penalty be exacted. The message that the competition was to be judged by the members, that if an image failed to live up to expectation they need not vote for it and that all the Challenges Committee were doing was providing a basic framework of rules and a space to play in was treated with deep suspicion.
The wary competitors, having spent the summer suffering an iron fist in an iron glove were suddenly and totally unexpectedly offered no fist at all.
Could they adapt to this new freedom?