How I Perceive My Role as Judge

I view the first and foremost role of a judge to be an educator.

• For novices, the educational experience will hopefully be an increased awareness of the basic issues that comprise good photography.

• For advanced photographers, the educational experience will be to further their understanding of how others (who perhaps are peers) view their work, as opposed to learning the basics.

Criteria for Judging

The criteria I use are “emotional impact,” “artistry,” and “technical issues.”

• Emotional impact is how the photo gets me in the gut – it includes the choice of the subject, creativity, uniqueness of the approach, mood, and (in some cases) story-telling.

• Artistry is composition, use of color, light, texture, perspective, taking the viewer’s eyes to the right place(s), absence of distracting items (such as miscellaneous stuff in the edges and corners), use of picture space, etc.

• Technical issues are sharpness, depth of field, exposure, control of details in the highs and lows, print quality, matting quality, etc.

I view emotional impact as the highest priority criterion. If it isn’t there, the photo is “out.”

Artistry and technical issues have roughly the same weight, but this depends on the context of the photograph.