| Warren Standley | ||
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Warren has judged at the Loudon Photography Club, and on several occasions for the Charlottesville Camera Club. |
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I firmly believe in the notion of a camera club judge as an educator and a promoter of amateur photography. I will judge each photographic image on its own merits, with an appreciation of, but no bias for, process and methodology. I will judge in a positive light, pointing out those areas where an image "shines" and offering suggestions for improving the image, especially those aspects which, in my judgment, detract from the strengths of the image. I will communicate a sense of my being a fair and unbiased judge so that the competitors will be open to my critique and the competition will remain a learning experience. I'll set the tone for individual critiques by starting with positive comments and I won't shy away from pointing out weaknesses or flaws, always communicating in a positive and non-condescending tone. My emphasis will be on providing "value added" to each of the competitors and not just ribbons to the few.
The Criteria I Use
First things first: I'll ask my contact at the club about the club's philosophy and goals for conducting competitions. I'll also find out about the club's definition of member classes (e.g.., novice, advanced) and the level of expertise expected of each class. I will also ask about the club's definition of image-related categories, e.g., nature, architectural, monochrome, and the like. I'll ask about the club's definition of special criteria, e.g., how they define "the hand of man" as applies to nature photographs. In the case of a themed competition, I'll ask to receive the specific direction given to the members to define the theme and, in the absence of same, will announce the definition(s) that I will use when deciding whether and how well an image represents the theme. In short, I owe it to the competitors to come to the competition as knowledgeable as possible about their competition.
My judging criteria will always encompass the Three Cs discussed at Joe's seminar. The individual criteria will be applied in a manner that takes into account the club's goals and the experience/expertise of the competition class that is being judged.
I will evaluate each image on the elements of Craftsmanship, Composition, and Creativity; not as independent criteria but as elements that interact to a give a sum that is, hopefully, greater than the parts. That having been said, I believe that there is a basic level of Craftsmanship that must be achieved and that an image, no matter how compelling it "might have been", cannot be a "winner" if its visual message is significantly distracted by violations of the basic criteria for sharpness, exposure, color rendition, presentation, and the like.
I will avoid the "seen that before" trap, recognizing that each photographer is on his/her own visual journey.
Whenever possible, I will evaluate the whole body of work and identify the award winners from the whole field, avoiding the "in-out" approach. Of course, the "in-out" process is happening in my head, but I won't use the competition process to do my bookkeeping for me by announcing the "in-out" decisions aloud. For categories with a large number of entries, I may ask to have the better images set aside to reduce the field, but I will avoid the "out" announcement.
Subject to approval by the club's Competition Chair, I will employ a more absolute standard instead of a relative one. By this I mean that an image is given a first place award because it is a damned good image and not just because it "survived".
The final image is the reason for the competition... the difficulty of the process is just a footnote and not an artistic factor. Two "for instances": (1) The final print of Ansel Adams' Moonrise, Hernandez is beautiful in and of itself... the extensive darkroom manipulation required to "pull" the image from an almost unusable negative does not make or break the image
the final image stands on its artistic merits. (2) The result of David Brashears' camerawork for the Imax movie Everest was breathtaking... the fact that it was accomplished over significant hurdles of logistics and weather/terrain is awesome; a snapshot taken under the same conditions would not be.