The role of the competition judge at a camera club

To me, the judge has several roles. The most important and most difficult role is to educate the competitors and the audience in as positive an atmosphere as possible, using the "Three C's". While performing that mission, the judge must also decide on the rank order of the "best" images in order to award ribbons or points, while eliminating the other images. The judge must be skilled and experienced enough to be articulate, decisive, self-disciplined and to make meaningful and succinct critique comments. The judge must not waste the members' time and patience by requiring multiple viewing passes of images with few eliminations per pass, due to indecisiveness, before completing the critiques and reaching the "required" number of winning images. The critique comments should benefit the entire audience, not merely the photographer of that image, therefore a good critique is as important for "advanced" as for "novice" images.

By using as positive an atmosphere as possible and being honest and educative during the critique, the judge will encourage improvement and, hopefully, future participation in club activities. To perform the role of educative critiquer, the judge must explain "why" he/she eliminated certain images and "kept" other images. The judge must know the rules and criteria of that club.

The criteria for me to use as a judge

My criteria will be oriented on the "three Cs"

Craftsmanship covers the technical aspects of photography and printing and is probably the easiest to articulate. I would evaluate and comment on exposure, contrast range, accuracy of the colors [or shades of gray, blacks & whites], depth of field accomplished, exposure, focus, printing skills, such as burning and dodging [and possibly, type of paper selected], cleanliness and "spotting" skill, and matting.

Under Composition, I would comment on elements of visual design, such as rhythm, texture, proportion, balance, lines, shapes, dominance, and perspective as they pertain to use of and placement within the picture space. I would comment on selection of a background that compliments, rather than detracting from, the subject. I would also comment on elements that inappropriately draw the eye, as well, skill in cropping and use of negative space.

In judging Creativity, I would look for and comment on imaginative and unusual ways to "see" a subject and different approaches to photographing it. The differences can be the camera angle or location, the amount of illumination, variation of depth of field and focus. I certainly intend to judge the images in that competition and not compare them to images previously seen.

Time constraints within a competition will probably greatly reduce the number of different items among the "three Cs" that can be discussed. But, through practice, I can select the more important issues to discuss.

I intend never to use nonspecific and noneducational comments, such as, "This image doesn't do it for me, out."