Had a new experience last Saturday. A consortium of camera / photo clubs in SW Michigan had their regular photo contest at the local community college, and I was invited to sit as one of the judges. I've entered a fair number of contests, but this was the first time I ever judged one.
The judging as done by teams of three judges. We used USB numeric keypads with a keys programmed for "in" and "out". A few thoughts - 1. The process was very fast. Possibly even too fast. I looked at my watch after the first run through and started keeping time. In the course of 3-4 run troughs (acceptances on the first round, honors, and then prizes) we averaged about 30 seconds per photo (based on the the total number of photos in the first run through.) With about 200 photos to judge it almost had to be that fast. A lot more time was spent evaluating the prize winners vs the first cut. (I should comment that the entires were in 3 categories - prints, slides, digital.) 2. A lot of technical aspects of the shots just slap you in the face when you do the quick assessment. Bad lighting, bad color balance, awkward models (I was assigned to the portraiture group) just hit you like a baseball bat. Similarly, very good but low impact shots were at bit of a disadvantage. 3. I was surprised and how consistent the judging seemed to be. I'd estimate that my vote went with the majority about 90% of the time. 4. It only happened once - but one shot I initially voted against that got in I wound up voting _for_ in the next round. Made me think of some of the comments re the Pentax gallery. 5. Color calibration and contrast control was a real issue with the digital shots. A lot of the photographers were sitting in the room and the feedback with digital often was "that's not how it looks on my screen." Overall - it was a pretty interesting experience. I always imagined judges looking at my photos like I look at them - pouring over them for a long time, looking at the nuance and detail. I should of put 2 + 2 together - when you consider the numbers of photos they are looking at, it's a pretty snap judgment process. And the slightest technical fault can get your image booted... Anyhow - it was fun and I saw a lot of excellent photos. I observed the judging of the nature category as well - a bird shot took first place but I was surprised at how hard the judges were on the bird images. The standards for bird photography are sky high (no pun intended.) - MCC -- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Mark Cassino Photography Kalamazoo, Michigan www.markcassino.com - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net
