The idea of the Challenge - full title Birthday Challenge and Treasure Hunt- is present a level playing field for those who aren’t necessarily good photographers or videographers
We run the RTF for the rest of the year and this year we also have the calendar competition both of which rely on artistic merit to win.
You can enter the Challenge with an FPV aircraft and submit screenshots from the controller or phone complete with OSD. Challenge is about finding things andcreating clear images - which means, to us, subject and bonus items showing bice and big in the picture to save us having to fanny aboutwith magnifying glasses.
We would far rather see a picture of say A Sailing Dinghy bonus for two or more crew, bonus for all wearing lifejackets, bonus if all lifejackets are red (not orange) which shows it clearly rather than a beautiful seascape with a moody sky and scudding clouds with the dinghy a speck in the distance where we have to decide on the basis of a couple of pixels whether it is one person or two in the boat.
It’s content, not composition we are looking for.
We were lucky that the cryptic clue bonuses didn’t impact on the final positions - especially amongst the top runners. But we did have control of the bonuses, they weren’t random. But allowing GADC members to vote for pictures based on how pretty they are, or on the popularity of the member who took them or any other factor, which works for RTF, Cal Comp and FAFEC, doesn’t gel with a competition that is serious - cash is involved and that makes it serious indeed.
The idea of the Joker bears thinking about and we will try and think of a fair and transparent way of introducing so fun element of “hidden” bonuses.
The idea of the badges for completing a certain percentage of the subjects has also been discussed between the judges previously along with a completist badge - that will give an incentive for those who aren’t too worried about dropping points to try as many subjects as possible. Not everyone is out for the cash prizes - and those who do win them have probably spent rather more in fuel and other expenses to achieve their top placings!