Mark Cassino wrote: <snip>
After judging the GFM Nature Photography Weekend contest with Doug Brewer for several years, I can definitely emphasize here. It's a pretty intense experience. Last year was the contest's first Digital year and to my surprise (and I think to Doug's as well), the judging process was significantly easier than it had been with slides. No fussing around with light boxes, loupes and/or projectors. We loaded everyhting on a hard drive and used Adobe Bridge and Photoshop to view it all. The "digital thing" actually allowed us to spend *more* time on each image, not less (as I had feared). It was also really easy to come back to an image later for further consideration/reconsideration. That said, it's remarkable how quickly the process goes. And I think a significant danger in judging photographs can be in spending too *much* time rather than too little. Not that it isn't possible to be to hasty in rushing to judgement, but overanalysis can be just as detrimental. And it's insidious because it can make you think you're being "more thorough" when you're really just overintellectualizing the whole process. I see this when PESO images get a really strong favorable reaction at first... and then people start analyzing and nit-picking to the extent that they seem to have lost the point of the photograph. Doug and I have very similar attitudes toward and ideas about photography, so we work quite efficiently together. The first pass is generally just to weed out the obvious non-contenders: Over/under exposure, for example. The next pass is where we sort of narrow down the field of photos that are contenders. Then we start ranking the remaining shots within their respective categories. Strong images always stand out right from the start. It usually doesn't *require* much time to pick a good photo. In fact, since last year's contest was digital, I have copies of all the entries on CD and with almost a year past to reflect on and reevaluate this images, I can say my hindsight now doesn't find any images we rejected that we shouyldn't have or winners that didn't deserve to win. One thing to consider is that in a contest, people aren't submitting a dozen ever-so-slight variations on the same shot. When you evaluate a project of your own that's generally what you're doing and it's when taking time and thinking about the photos at length can come into play more. But in this, and most other photo contests, people just submit 1 to 3 images that are generally strikingly different from each other and from the other contestant's entries. My philosophy is to give a lot of weight to that "blink" moment when you first see an image and it either grabs you or it doesn't. Then consider, interpret and analyze... but try to keep your memory of that first impression because that's where the emotional impact of the photograph lies. You didn't mention if you had any discussions with the other judges during judging. This is something Doug and I do quite a bit. Very little at first but definitely increasing as we narrow down toward the winners. It's an interesting process. -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
