Judgement Day

It all started with a message...

I was relaxing on the sofa when I got a notification on my phone from a old college friend explaining that a judge had cancelled for a club competition for this coming Friday. Would I be interested in taking his place?

It was a bit of a strange request because although we had been friends for over 30 years, out recent contacts had been few and far between (ironically the last time we had met was at a Charlie Waite talk). I was vaguely aware he was into photography and a member of a club, however I wasn't aware he knew the same of me, and certainly we had never done any photography together or had he seen any of my work.

In short I was surprised that he knew enough of my work and background to even consider me. Was he really that desperate?  Added to that he had no idea whether I had the skill, knowledge and experience to be a judge.

As for myself, I had to ask myself whether I wanted to do it? At the end of the day everyone is a judge in some way as we form opinions on someone else's work. However saying whether you like a photo is one thing. A judge has to more than a blind critic, but also needs to communicate a reason for their decision. The best judges are also teachers and mentors, offering practical advice on how the photographer can improve. Did I have the skills to do that?

Also being a judge you have to fairly self-confident and thick skinned. In the past on this very blog, I have heavily criticized judges. (evidence for the prosecution here, here and here). Did I want to put myself in that same position? It is one thing to pass opinions between friend and family, but did I want to do it in front of a group of photography enthusiasts

On the other hand, I am a strong believer in that you should only criticise if you are prepared to try and do better. Also I would be paid to go and view a set of photos, which sounded like a good gig. Also I felt that as an avid scholar of the art and history of photography I had enough in my locker to give something back. 

In truth I only spent a couple of minutes deliberating before replying back that I would do it.

The Learned Judge

 I had only 4 days to before the event, so I thought it would be a good idea to

a) get some practice in
b) maybe actually learn a bit about judging.

Practice was pretty easy. There are loads of photo-sharing sites almost begging you to critic them. Rather than make snap judgements, I deliberately slowed down and created a monologue in my head about my thoughts about the image. I found it was often to easier to find faults in an image, than positives. Poor cropping, artifacts, shadows and blown highlights were often in evidence, and it was easy to see where an image could be improved. However I didn't want to be the kind of judge who only picked out faults, so I tried to find  positive things to say. This was not always easy and I hoped the standard on the day would be higher.

It also forced me to think about my judging philosophy.  One of my criticisms about judges in the past is that they often concentrate on the minutiae and rarely on the image itself. My local association guidelines indicate that 50% of the weighting should be based on the image story, or how well the subject expressed itself to the viewer, but in the past I have found this is rarely the case and most marks are lost by artifacts the judge found distracting. I was determined not to be like that and judge based on the artistic as well as the technical merits.

On my locally association webpage I found some useful advice and information on judging. This one on the PAGB site was especially interesting. The advice was actually pretty good, but at the end of the day you are using your own values to judge and therefore I was determined that I stay true to myself

1) Be positive as well as critical
2) Don't be afraid to indicate personal preferences and biases. After all I am not a robot
3) Judge on the impact as well as the technical aspects

The competition

I must admit I had been expecting and gearing up to a pretty standard competition. 2 sets of images and prints, marked out of 20, with some held back and an overall winner.

However I was informed the day before that the competition was something called "Mix and match" which was a new one on me. However some questioning of some elder members of my club indicated that it was something that used to be more common in the days of slide projectors.

The rules were as follows (read carefully, there maybe questions)

1. Club A chooses an image. For this they get 5 points
2. I judge the image out of 5 for quality
3. Club B chooses an image that has to in some way match Club A image. The criteria for the  matching is up to Club B. It could be a myriad of attributes such as colour, shape, subject or something totally different. The important thing is to pick an attribute that is obvious to me as a judge.
4. I judge that image for quality out of 5, then I can an additional mark from 1 to 5 for how well that image matches Club A image.

After 3 images, the clubs switch around in terms of lead.

It sounds very subjective, and it is, but so is all judging. However unlike normally judging which is done in silence, audience participation is actively encouraged both in comments on quality and the reasoning behind the match.

There are a few other things that stood out from that. Firstly quality is only 5 marks. This got me out of a bind, since I have never understood why although club photos are in theory marked between 1 and 20, the lowest mark I have ever seen is 13. What are the other 12 marks for? I have been tempted over the years to see how bad an image has to be to break the 13 barrier. However in a competition, would I be brave enough as a judge to use the full mark range? Fortunately I did not need to find out. 5 marks gave me plenty of latitude to use the full mark set

Secondly, how do you measure matching quality? There is no advice for that, so i had to go with my gut instinct.

Judgement Day

So how did it go?  Well firstly, I quite enjoyed the interaction element, and while sometimes I had to fight against undue influence from the audience, it did make me feel that all competitions should encourage such feedback.

Judging the quality of the image was not that hard, and I felt I gave some reasonable feedback. Assessing the quality of the match was more subjective and difficult. However I felt I joined in the spirit of the game and no one seem to complain to much or accuse me as unqualified to judge.

So would I do it again? It is probably a big step up from this to say a inter-club competition where  the stakes are higher and therefore the demands on the judging more. However I think it is something I would still consider doing in the future

But don't judge me on that.....

Judge and Jury for the day

Anyone who has ever had their photograph judged will know the feeling. of your eyes slowly rotating into your eye sockets as the judge chooses another photo with seemingly little artistic merit, while overlooking your photographic masterpiece. In the inevitable post-mortem at the pub later, the losers discuss the judges obvious lack of understanding of basic photography (while the winner obviously tries to make a case for the opposite)

Well, on Monday I had the opportunity to be a judge for a day as my prize for winning the previous weeks #Sharemondays competition.

So how did it go?

Firstly, I had not exactly been looking forward to it. It meant that a lot of strangers were relying on me to carry on the mantle of the competition. What if I made a cock up of it ? Would it mean I would be for ever castigated by other twitter photographers as the person who killed #Sharemondays?

On the Monday, I started watching as the entries rolled in. It is here that I hit my first issue. Twitter is in many ways a great platform, but for a application which is used by millions world wide it has its quirks.

One of these is its search capabilities.

I had assumed it would be quite easy to filteron the required hashtag within a certain date range, but when I went through advanced search and set the search criteria as the required hashtag and the date range as the day before Monday and the Monday of the competition, I got absolutely nothing. My response was "you have to be fecking kidding me"

It took me a while to find out it only seemed to work if the end date was missed off. Once that was worked out I could see the entries for that Monday. On Tuesday I made the conscious decision to stay off social media for the rest of the day. When i got home, I did the search again, and created a  twitter moments of all the entries.

Twitter moments is a nice way of creating a collection of tweets together. It also allows you to filter those tweets that have either been incorrectly tagged with #sharemondays or have attempted to hijack the feed.

I however quickly hit an issue. In moments, like the main twitter, you can filter the tweets  using a search criteria such as tag and date range. I used the same one I was using on the main twitter feed and it came up with a selection of images. Good I thought, this will easy. It was only when i started going through them I noticed some images from the main feed were missing. It was clear that the two search strings gave a different selection of images.

"You have to be double fecking kidding me" I thought.

I therefore I had to manually go through the twitter feed adding in entries the moments search had missed. Still by 6 O'Clock I had what I thought was the complete list and published the moment and went for dinner.

Except I hadn't.

Two people contacted me to say their's were missing and they were right. For reasons only known to Twitter, some images, although tagged correctly, did not show up. It makes you wonder how many entries from the other twitter competition feeds never get seen for the same reasons. Still to this day I cannot guarantee that I got them all. All I can say is that I tried my best. I did however have a dream a few days later in which total strangers accosted me in the street complaining I would not look at their photos.

Armed with the most complete list I could compile, I went about judging them.

I had thought quite a bit in the previous week about how to judge the images. Judging them on a purely technical level seemed pointless. The photographers would range from ability to beginner to pro. For some it would be like assessing a Picasso by looking at the brush strokes.  Anyway one of my bugbears with competition judges is their tendency to concentrate on the minutiae imperfections , but not the image as a whole, something I was determined not to do.

Instead I decided to use two criteria. Firstly did the image resonate with me? The image needed to to have some sort of connection at a quite instinctive level. Secondly, was it an image I wished I could of taken? I must admit that my judgement may of been colored by my own desire to push the boundaries of what I consider photography, so I was looking for the same criteria in others.

Maybe these are not the best criteria to judge photos and it would make the choice a very personal one, but it was the only way I felt I could do it.

The first task was to filter the 80 or so images down to a short list of 4. In truth I could of chosen double that number, and I tried to include a wide range of images and genre's in the final 4.

Then we had to choose the winner. In hindsight, this was easier than I made out, since the eventually winner had stood out from virtually the 1st time I saw it. However I had to go through the process to ensure that I was choosing the right image for the right reasons.

So did the correct the image win?

Well in one way yes, since it was only my decision to give and therefore it does not matter if people agree or disagree with it. Of course, one of the problems basing the decision on a instinctive like or dislike, is that another image may of made it on another day. In other words, at the end of the day judging will always be subjective and while its nice to win, not being chosen does not in anyway de-value your work. Its just one person out of 6 billion opinion.

Now its over, I have to say I quite enjoyed the process. I learnt a lot about assessing other photos and a little about how the criteria I use to assess my own images. Of course the big question is, now I have been a judge for a day, will that mean I will have more sympathy for people judging my own work?

Simple answer.....Nah.




 

Why did they take that?

Last night we had our Annual inter club competition between MPS and Ashby photographic club. where we pit the 30 of the best prints and DPI's as chosen by the members in an open category.

The club membership had only deemed one of my photos worthy, which was disappointing but fair enough. However it at least it allowed me to have some cards in the game, so to speak.

The image that was selected was the one of hammer smashing a light bulb

As it was my image was one of the 1st to come up and I was eager to hear the advice that the judge had to impart...

Judge :- "This image is technically very good"

Me : - "good start" I thought

Judge :- "But I can't see why they took it"

Me :- "WTF!!!" I thought

In the end the image was awarded 14 marks which was the lowest mark the judge made all competition. What was worse was that this was the only time the judge made that comment, so either he was not being consistent in his marking, or there was something specific about my image he could not relate too.

Now normally I tell myself to let judges comments slide off me like water of a ducks back, but I must admit this one really got under my skin and I let it affect the rest of the competition and the inevitable pub post-mortem.

So much so, that I did something I rarely do in competitions and actually questioned him later about his comments.

His explanation was that he had been reading a book by Susan Sontag, the long time partner of the legendary photographer Annie Leibovitz. In this the author had said that if something does not connect to you directly then it is worthless.

To me this is a difficult concept to understand. If we consider anything we do not understand or relate to as worthless, we are setting ourselves up as the ultimate arbitrator  of worth. If we do this, we are denying the chance that someone has seen something that we have not and therefore closed our mind to the chance of learning.

For example, there were a number of images last night that I could not understand why the photographer had taken them, or what the photographer was trying to relay. But rather than closing my mind to them, it made me curious to investigate and work out  why some saw things I could not. That is the way we learn; not by pretending that all that is closed to us is worthless, but by accepting that we must always re-evaluate our opinions and prejudices

Now maybe it is a requirement for a judge to remove ambiguities from their opinion, so that they can have clarity in their judging. However to me it is disappointing that a judge cannot move beyond their personal opinion and try and put themselves  in the photographers shoes.

Again I think the most disappointing thing is that the same comment could be said of many images last night and many images generally. Personally I cannot understand why anyone would take the same image of the millennium bridge in London, which has been photographed many times or a "bird on a stick" (however competently done).  However I am willing to accept that to they have a reason for taking it.

Saying that the one thing I probably would of changed last night was the name of the photo because it perhaps would of more clearly identified my reason for taking the image. However since the judge freely admitted he took little notice of the title, it would of made little difference in the result.

The judges other comment was that he felt the image did not add anything to the genre. Well here I am guilty as charged (a little judge joke there). However in my defense, if that is the criteria we judge images, 95%  of competition images should be thrown away now.

You rarely see anything in a competition which even pushes boundaries, never mind breaks them. Be it a photo of a waterfall, a picture of a mountain, a bird on a stick, or a portrait; in almost all occasions I have seen it done before and better. However that does not in anyway devalue the image.

Also this is the nature of competitions. Photo presented have been filtered in most part via the opinions of the member. Unfortunately it is also true that most images are chosen on the basis of how well they will do in the competitions. This has a tendency to remove the outliers because they are considered to risky in such a context.

If there were genre breaking photos, they are almost certainly been removed from the pile a long time ago like a dangerous mutation is removed from the gene pool.

However I did take some things away from last night.

Firstly is a realisation that while it is important that you learn from the great masters of art, you should not follow their advice blindly. After all we have no context to understand how they came to their opinions. Instead we should only use it to test our givens in the hope that it might reveal new insights, perhaps ones which are unique to you as an individual.

Secondly, judges opinions, while valued, are just that one persons opinions. They have a more value doe to their experience, but if you let yourself  be led purely by those opinions you just become the equivalent of a fake Rolex. Good but a poor copy of the original.

So you have two choices. Follow the accepted opinion, or have the courage to follow your own path. One way is harder, but ultimately more rewarding.

I know which way I'm going...


P.S the club won the competition last night

Competiton time

One of the burdens you have to face in order to become a better photographer is to face the criticism of your work. So it was that I placed my work in order to be be judged in Melbourne photographic society's yearly themed competition.

The competition was based around a theme or word. This year was based around the word "Opulent", which apart requiring a lot us to go searching for a dictionary, was not met with any great enthusiasm by the majority of the society. Even the person judging the entry said that it was a theme he was unlikely to be taking back to his own society.

On the other hand, despite my own misgivings, I actually warmed to the theme. Unlike last years transport theme, it required a lot more thought and effort and forced you out of your comfort zone.

I entered 3 DPI photos and one print. Because I had actually spent some time thinking about the theme, I had high hopes this year. Not of winning, but hopefully being held back, which is the equivalent of reaching the top table.

Now photo competitions are a bit like exams. I doubt anyone actually likes them, but they are a necessary way of marking your progress. On the other hand no one likes having their hard work and effort critically dismembered. Not that judges tend to be over critical(they know if they are they will not be asked again), but it is easy to get very sensitive about any critiques.

The judge, Alan Roswell, was actually very good, and although you could argue about some of his selections, his comments generally were valid. One annoyance though is that  although photos are given a score up to 20, all judges seem determined to only mark them from 12-20. While I know they are trying to be kind, it mean that you have a compression of marks and makes it difficult to differentiate between photos.

So how did I do. Well bad, ok,ok, and ok.

Firstly the bad.

This one got 12 marks, which was basically bottom of he heap. The worst thing however, was that he was right, and I already knew it. His main complaint was that the 1st cake, which dominated the image was out of focus. This was a photo I took at the May festival, and it was only when I reviewed them later that it occurred to me that this could be used as part of the opulent theme.

However I knew it was flawed, and if I had realised it earlier I would of gone and taken it again. I put it in the competition, more in hope than with any logic and it got what it deserved. However despite the low mark I learned an important lesson. If you do not believe in a photo yourself, don't submit it, even just to make up the numbers.


The 2nd photo was this one.

Now I was quite proud of this one, and to be fair the judge liked it, but he was put off by the fruit in the top left corner. Looking at it on the big screen, he may have a point, but even so I thought it deserved more than 16(Actually there is a spot on the photo I find even more glaring)

The 3rd photo was my print.

Now irritatingly the judge had no real criticism of this, in fact saying it would make a good patterns entry photo.  For a fleeting instant I thought he would hold it back, but in the end he gave it a rather disappointing 16. The only reason it did not score more I can think of, is that the judge a) did not think it showed 'opulence' (if so, I disagree) or b) he had already made up his mind that there were better photos to come.


The last photo was this one

The judge seemed to really like this one and gave it 17 marks. The only thing he complained about was the leaf at the bottom, which he felt distracted from the image. Again it was valid critic. I really need to develop a judges eye for these things so that I can spot and correct issues before I submit them.

So after all that, some good marks, but I have still not quite met the standard I want.

I did however learn from the experience. Firstly the difference between the top and the almost ran is very small. Also for competition entry you need to learn to look at your photos like a judge does and correct those small issues. Finally I learned a lot just from seeing how people frame their photos, which can make a lot of difference to the final image.

So good, but not quite there yet. We also had next years theme chosen. We missed a number of bullets on this one. It could of been architecture(too broad), romance (just uugh). In the end it was glass, which I think has the right blend of not being too prescriptive, without being too broad

My next decision is whether I want to put any photos for selection in the external competition. Compared to internal ones, that selection process is even tougher, so it is something I need to mull.

The art of selection

Having spent the last few days going through the photos I took at Mallory park I have faced one of the problems that occurs when you do an event like that is, namely how do you go about reducing the mass of photos to the few pictures that you wish to share?

In total I took 625 photos in a mad 3 hours at Mallory. It would be wonderful to believe that each one was a gem of photographic perfection that should be cherished and celebrated, but that is never going to happen. Instead I have 625 photos of varying quality each which need to be ranked and in most cases simply deleted.

The easy job is getting rid of the ones which are just plain bad, such as they are out of focus or have the wrong exposure. Others are just badly composed with faults like chopping part of the subject off or a similar composition faux pas. These are the easy ones to find and once these have been removed you are left with about half the photos you started with.

There are also the duplicates; photos taken in quick succession but basically show the same scene. These can also be whittled down to just one photo (I used to save all the photos even the bad ones. This was a hang over to the days of film, since after paying for them to be developed you felt beholden to retain them. I also used to believe that even bad photos could perhaps be saved in the future. But now I realise they just take up valuable disk space and need to be exiled to digital hell),

After this process you are left with a core set  of photos without any discernible technical faults. Then starts the next challenge. You need to go through them again and judge whether there is a decent photo trying to escape. If you are lucky you will find some flawless gems which stand by their own merits,but more likely you will find photos which don't quite make the grade. This is where you start up the photo editing software

In the old days of film (unless you owned a developing studio) photography was a strictly WYTIWYG affair (What You Took Is What You Got). Nowadays unless you are very skillful (or in my case, lucky)  this is just the start of the process. Virtually without exception, all photos can be improved by some tweaking in Photoshop and the like, but some need more major rework. The next stage is to see what can be done to take a photo to that next level.

The things you can do to a photo are only limited by your time and your skill levels. It could be anything from playing around with the white balance(if taken in RAW mode), changing the levels, tweaking the color curve, converting it to black and white or just cropping it to produce a different viewpoint. On top of that there are numerous effects you can play with such as filters or just removing annoying distractions via clone stamping. The list is endless.

These range from the easy to the difficult and of course there is a philosophical debate to be had about when a photo stops being a photo and becomes a Photoshop construct. To me it is when the photo becomes something that could not have been achieved through the camera alone, however leaving that to one side for now, generally you start with the changes that have the maximum impact for minimum work.

Cropping is always a good place to start. In some ways it is the simplest one to achieve, but the most difficult to master. A good crop can add enormously to the photo, but the issue is what to crop and how much. This is an artistic call rather than something that can be legislated

Original

Cropped, possibly cropping more would work????

Converting the photo to black and white is also simple to do and can sometimes have a huge impact. It is a strange thing that removing the colors can improve a photo, but the colors can sometimes prove a distraction from the subject. By removing them you end of with the subject coming to the fore, which is why portraits are so often better in black and white.

Original

In black and white. Now the intense expression on the lead rider comes to the fore

Once you have picked out those photos that can benefit from extra processing and retained those lucky ones that need no or little enhancement, the rest can be deemed unworthy and can be relegated to the also ran pile (although still retained waiting for that unlikely day when maybe your Photoshop technique has advanced enough or a different requirement makes them useful again). The rest are to be cropped, clone stamped or otherwise digitally manipulated.

You may now be left with 5% of your original photos and hopefully those left are worthy of extra critical attention. In my case this was still 20 or 30 photos. Of course you could stop here, kick your feet up and have a cup of tea, but since we are in a never ending quest for perfection we need to continue our search for excellence. What we are looking for now are those few photos you would be happy to share to your peers and the world.

Here is where the real challenge begins...

So you have 30 photos. The obvious defects have been removed. They have been buffed up with Photoshop to the best of your ability and you wish to pick those most likely to propel you to glory. Unfortunately this is a bit like choosing which of your children you like the most.

The question then is how do you subjectively judge a photo? The truth is there is no easy way. Like art, ones persons Picasso is another persons set of pointless squiggles on a canvas. In a few precious instances a photo just leaps out from the screen, but mostly we need to be more subjective.

In order to do this I tend to use 3 criteria.

Criteria 1 is whether it add a new angle to the subject? So many photos put on sites such as 500px are of the same scene, taken in the same way. This to me is not photography, just advanced copying. To me a good photo does something different, an unusual angle, a different shutter or aperture setting. The list is endless which is why it is hard to understand why so many photos end up just as clones of earlier work.

Criteria 2 is whether the photo tells a story to me.  Especially with  photos involving people, a good photo is one that captures a moment in time and tells the narrative of that quantum second. A look on someones face, the body language, something that indicates what was going on at that never to be repeated moment in time. The problem is however expressing that story to the person who sees the photo in a unambiguous way. As in all art, its quality can often be down to how well the photo connects with it's audience.

This lad turned up in a few photos and I wanted an image of him watching the cycling, with his bike. In my mind he is thinking of the glory days ahead when he is old enough to race

Same lad on the way out. I thought it was a nice way to end the day

Even after applying these criteria there is still room for doubt. There are photos which you think may have merit but others dislike making you doubt your photographic sanity. Are they good in your head only? Will releasing them show your artistic judgement is fatally flawed?

These are difficult dilemmas and at the end of the day while getting the opinion of others can be a useful exercise it is your photo and if you like it you should be willing to stand up to your convictions. Sometime the rest of the world is just wrong.

So the 3rd Criteria is that you like it and at the end of the day that is the most important test of all.

I am not sure about this photo. In some ways it is a mistake, but i like the energy and movement

Similar here. This was more by accident than design but I like the feeling of movement. But is it a good photo?  I don't know, but I like it