Does it matter?

[DanK]

Thanks. I thought about that as well. This particular judge clearly does substitutions of this sort; he also recommended it for at least one other image that someone else submitted.

I realized this morning that some of the very first flower macros I took years ago, when I was just experimenting with the genre and had very weak postprocessing skills and no real control over lighting, did in fact have dark gray, not entirely uniform backgrounds. They don't look very good. I remembered that this was why I taught myself how to select by color--to get rid of the drab backgrounds.

One problem with competitions is that it elevates the seriousness of the criticisms one gets (and which I always welcome). That makes it a little harder to remember that in the end, it's a question of what you want to do. If the judge's comments help you do it better, great. And I have found that many of the comments I have received from judges have in fact improved what I do. But if the judge has in mind a product that isn't what you want, so be it.

In this case: apart from the fact that I like the plain black backgrounds, as I mentioned earlier in the thread, they have generally been very well received. So, I think I will simply chalk this up as a difference in tastes, although I will continue to experiment with other backgrounds.

[Manfred M]

Sometimes one has to think like a judge, Dan. That is one of the reasons I trained to be a national level judge was to improve my own work; to figure out what is the difference between a good image and a great image. When one sees and scores hundreds of images, one starts to understand what makes a great image and tt's likely not what you think.

Sure, the main feature are getting all the basics right; the technical choices that create a quality image and the compositional choices that result in a solid arrangement free of distractions. If you nail those issues, you will get a decent score in a competition, but if you want to go to the next level, you will need something that the judge does not see every day, something that catches his or her attention on an emotional level.

This suggests setting the mood, impact, interesting or unusual subject matter and an imaginative approach to presenting the material. If I Google flower images, I find lots of examples that are not all that different from your work, often on either a black or white background. A step up might be something similar, but with a bit of dew on them. Shooting them from an unusual position, etc. Make your shots look unusual and interesting.

[billtils]

Sometimes one has to think like a judge, Dan.

If only they all thought the same ...

[Manfred M]

If only they all thought the same ...

At a high level, they do, at least the good ones display that behaviour, Bill. That does not mean that they will end up giving exactly the same score, but they will tend to be fairly close.

The ones that don't that I've worked with tend to look at themselves as the "standard setter" judge based on how they would have done something. I find that frustrating because their standard of what is good or not is based on the premise that their way is the best way.

[DanK]

Sometimes one has to think like a judge, Dan.

No, I really don't need to.

First, in my experience, even high-end judges are quite inconsistent. That's fine with me. To some degree, they should be. There would be something wrong if they weren't. One can make technical criteria uniform--although even those "rules" are often broken by good photographers, even great ones. For example, it's in general a good rule to avoid bright edges, but it shouldn't be dogma. Check out Olivia Parker's photos. She has a lot of bright edges.

But beyond that, there are critical aspects of photography that simply aren't a matter of rules; they are a matter of preference and taste. It's not engineering. For example, you have repeatedly said that people should avoid pure blacks. That makes perfect sense in some cases, e.g., when one is accidentally losing shadow detail. However, sometimes a photographer may want a black background, and in that case, it would make no sense to avoid it because some judge said to. And some of the greats have used pure black backgrounds. Ted posted one example some time ago. Olivia Parker again provides an example. See if you can find Pomegranates on Cookhouse Ledge, which I consider a truly breath-taking image. I've seen it in person, and like a number of her 1990s prints, it has a plain black background. I like them, others have used them, and my prints with them have been generally very well received (including by two gallery directors), so I am going to keep using them. If thinking like a judge means changing that, then I don't want to think like a judge.

So, when I listen to judges, I see what I can learn that will help me do what I want to do. That's often a lot, although less now than when I was a novice. I disregard comments that don't help me, that are inconsistent with what I am trying to do, and that I simply disagree with. I do the same with people who aren't judges. I recently got some good suggestions from a framer.

In addition, a lot of what is rewarded is simply a matter of fads. As you have pointed out, the expectation among "fine art" photographers is that prints should be on "fine art" paper. I totally disregard that fad because those papers are poorly suited to what I want to produce. As I put at the bottom of my artist's statement at the gallery where I have my work:

Because of my love of detail, I most often print on a baryta paper, a coated paper with a slight sheen that preserves detail.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Interestingly enough, I'm running a Poll elsewhere which involves a small sample of people voting for a "best" sensor model.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/63761776

Reading the above, it occurs to me that a panel of judges is quite a small sample, statistically speaking.

Take, for example, five judges, three of whom award 8/10, one awards 7/10 and the other awards 9/10. 60% of those 5 judges said 8/10 but the margin of error is a whopping 43%, so if there were say 100,000 judges the chances of getting 8/10 from that crowd is somewhat variable ...

https://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Have a play, perhaps taking the USA Supreme Court (13 judges) as an example ...

Ted - I think that your argument is interesting but rather misleading given that all judges have scored the result virtually identically with a potentially very small margin of error, given the scale is integer based. What if the actual scores had been 7.49, 8.00, 8.00, 8.00 and 8.51 and then were rounded to the nearest integer?

In many ways, given the typical scoring system is that we deduct 1/2 point for a minor issue and a full point for a major one. What one person regards as a major issue, someone else will regard as something fairly minor and another might feel it is a fault, but the overall impact on the image is negligible. The typical time that a judge spends evaluating and scoring an image is less than 15 seconds.

I think your Supreme Court analogy is interesting because all of them (regardless of the country we are writing about) are considered to be experts in the area of law at the constitutional level. Because of personal biases they tend to favour certain sections of the constitution as well as specific interpretations. Judging photographs is somewhat similar; the judges have personal biases and views; some of which may (or may not) be shared by the other judges on the jury. There will be inherent errors in the process, just as in any other "test"; there will be failures in the process itself.

Your poll in the "best" sensor has some interesting biases built in. What does one mean by "best"? Some people might view it as the lowest cost one. Legally it infers "premium quality", so there could be a number of "best Foveon sensors". The other issue is the expertise of the group responding to the survey as defined by the DPReview subscribers. An imaging expert might have one opinion whereas the average user with little or no expertise will have another, another possibility is that a specific sensor maker could flood the responses with their desired outcome and have people sign up to produce the result they want to see.

A well designed survey will have filters to try to identify and discard erroneous data, but surveys like those are more than a single question and ask the same question a number of different ways to look for consistency in responses.

[MrB]

Dan, this afternoon I tried to put into words all the points you have made succinctly and accurately in Post #26.

Thank you.
Philip

[DanK]

In fact, due to the implied irrelevance of normal polling statistics to photo-club judging, I would be quite happy if my post and your response were deleted, is that possible?

I haven't found many things to which normal statistics aren't applicable, but if you edit your post, the option to delete it should be at the top of the editing window.

[Round Tuit]

Sometimes one has to think like a judge, Dan. That is one of the reasons I trained to be a national level judge was to improve my own work; to figure out what is the difference between a good image and a great image. When one sees and scores hundreds of images, one starts to understand what makes a great image and tt's likely not what you think.

Sure, the main feature are getting all the basics right; the technical choices that create a quality image and the compositional choices that result in a solid arrangement free of distractions. If you nail those issues, you will get a decent score in a competition, but if you want to go to the next level, you will need something that the judge does not see every day, something that catches his or her attention on an emotional level.

This suggests setting the mood, impact, interesting or unusual subject matter and an imaginative approach to presenting the material. If I Google flower images, I find lots of examples that are not all that different from your work, often on either a black or white background. A step up might be something similar, but with a bit of dew on them. Shooting them from an unusual position, etc. Make your shots look unusual and interesting.

"Sometimes one has to think like a judge, Dan."
That is only true if one wants to win competitions. I don't think that most of us would be happy creating pictures to somebody else's taste or expectations. The only way to connect emotionally with your viewers is to know you viewers and play to their emotions. That is something that is extremely easy to do with someone that you know well and impossible to do with a stranger.
I will never create a picture that will please everybody; neither will you nor anyone else. The best we can do is to create pictures that we are proud of and that truly reflect our own taste. In order to do that, I consider it critical to continually seek advice and study photos from other photographers. You are absolutely right that our understanding of what it takes to make good photos increases with every photo that we analyse or study and with every piece of advice that we get whether we accept it or not. Incorporating that understanding into our photos only comes with experience.

[Manfred M]

Dan / Andre - I guess I did not explain myself clearly enough.

A judge has to quickly evaluate an image and identify its strengths and weaknesses. This is a very important skill for any photographer to have, both while framing a shot (and deciding on the camera settings to use) as well as looking at an image and then understanding what areas require adjustments in post-processing to improve the image. When capturing an image, this is the point where we have to look at how the elements (including negative space) are built into the composition. It's also the time that we should be identifying distractions (especially those that occur at or near the edges of the frame and correcting them).

When it comes to PP work, it is important to recognize which parts of the image need some work and what that should be. This includes any global adjustments, area adjustments and local adjustments.

I'm certainly not inferring that a judge is always right and in fact, like you said Dan, I don't always agree with the judge and in fact have often tried something that is being critiqued in the image but did not use it because it did not work, in my view.

A strong, contemporary judge will not spout any of the rules of composition nor will they tell you how they would have taken the shot. They would suggest not stepping a bit further to the right or to the left; they will evaluate the image that is shown, not what it could have been.

The one problem that we have in evaluating our own work is that we have a sense of ownership and don't always see the results the same way as others do. Having two or three peers that understand photography at a high level make the same comment does get my attention and gets me re-evaluating my previously held positions.

Andre - while I agree, to some extent, that we need to separate winning competitions from good images, we have to temper that thought given that good images actually do win competitions. We do have to understand the limits of the club competition judging; the parameters used to judge images often lag the current fine art view of good images by several years. I can virtually guarantee that leading edge images found in contemporary galleries would likely do poorly in club competitions. I'd also have to suggest that more club photographers would not necessarily like the current trends in fine art work, especially those in the "post-photographic genre".

[billtils]

... I find that frustrating because their standard of what is good or not is based on the premise that their way is the best way.

Yes, we've all met those ones!

On a more serious note, one of the things that frustrates me is that the judging is a one way street, which detracts from the competitors' ability to learn. Sure, it's nice to win a medal or whatever but most of us enter to improve our photography, not to show off, and improvement requires a dialogue. I used to head up a business whose portfolio included conducting technical compliance assessments, and with that, the training of our external assessors and the client's internal auditors. We spent a lot of time in the training on how to communicate with the clients' staff, and that communication ability is near enough absent in too many photography judges. We also drummed into them "Leave your baggage at the door".

But then I suppose that we had the advantage of working in an environment which had a published set of objective standards, which reduced the personal taste element to near enough zero.

[billtils]

...
A strong, contemporary judge will not spout any of the rules of composition nor will they tell you how they would have taken the shot. They would suggest not stepping a bit further to the right or to the left; they will evaluate the image that is shown, not what it could have been.
...
The one problem that we have in evaluating our own work is that we have a sense of ownership and don't always see the results the same way as others do. Having two or three peers that understand photography at a high level make the same comment does get my attention and gets me re-evaluating my previously held positions.

Thanks Manfred - if you change "... will not spout ..." to "... should not spout ..." I couldn't agree more!

[xpatUSA]

n fact, due to the implied irrelevance of normal polling statistics to photo-club judging, I would be quite happy if my post and [Manfred's] response were deleted, is that possible?

I haven't found many things to which normal statistics aren't applicable, but if you edit your post, the option to delete it should be at the top of the editing window.

Thanks and done.

[DanK]

A strong, contemporary judge will not spout any of the rules of composition nor will they tell you how they would have taken the shot. They would suggest not stepping a bit further to the right or to the left; they will evaluate the image that is shown, not what it could have been.

Why not? I attended a competition not long ago at which the judge, a photographer with decades of honors strung after his name, did precisely this. In the case of two landscape photos, he explained that the compositional weaknesses (which even I considered glaring) could have been avoided simply by photographing from a different position. I found those among the most useful comments he made. Why should a judge not offer suggestions like this? This sounds like an arbitrary and counterproductive "rule" to me. It's also inconsistent with one other thing you wrote:

When capturing an image, this is the point where we have to look at how the elements (including negative space) are built into the composition.

Are you saying that judges nonetheless shouldn't comment on these?

We do have to understand the limits of the club competition judging; the parameters used to judge images often lag the current fine art view of good images by several years. I can virtually guarantee that leading edge images found in contemporary galleries would likely do poorly in club competitions. I'd also have to suggest that more club photographers would not necessarily like the current trends in fine art work, especially those in the "post-photographic genre".

I'd add that a lot of the work of past masters would fare badly by the criteria used by many judges. Ted showed us one that fails to follow a rule that you suggested that judges should impose (no pure blacks): Arnold Newman's photograph of Stravinsky sitting by a grand piano. I mentioned another: Parker's Pomegranates on Cookhouse Ledge. We could come up with many more. I mentioned also that some of Parker's other genres routinely violate one of the other "rules"--no bight elements at the border. Yet she is widely regarded as one of the best and most innovative photographers of recent times. Anyone who is asked by the likes of Ansel Adams to teach with him and has a large solo exhibit at the Peabody Essex ranks as a great photographer in my book, quite apart from the fact that I personally find some of her genres (but not all) to be truly stunning.

The one problem that we have in evaluating our own work is that we have a sense of ownership and don't always see the results the same way as others do. Having two or three peers that understand photography at a high level make the same comment does get my attention and gets me re-evaluating my previously held positions.

Of course. That's the reason to seek critical feedback not only from judges, but also from other photographers and from people who are neither but have a good aesthetic sense. Some of the most valuable feedback I have received has been from people who are in the last category, e.g., two friends who are painters. I don't care where the feedback comes from; I just want it to make me more effective at creating what I want to create. Having lived life more as an analyst than as a creative type, I can use a lot of help with this.

We can stress the usefulness of judges without making judging more than it is. It has a big subjective element. To some extent, this can be minimized by training, but to some degree, it is both unavoidable and desirable. You noted that key elements are mood, impact, and interest. These are necessarily subjective. You aren't moved by impressionist paintings. I am. That's fine, but it will affect how we view other forms of art as well. Similarly, the technical and compositional criteria that judges often rely on are often helpful, but they aren't statutes or mathematical laws, and superb photographers often don't obey them. (Just as innovative musicians and painters often don't follow the norms of the day.) That's part of creativity.

I frankly think this discussion is a bit of a red herring. Judging photographs is not like evaluating a mathematical proof, calculating the maximum surge created by turning on an electric motor, or--to bring this closer to home for me--figuring out whether a student has the correct error term in a statistical model. Well-trained judges have knowledge that many (not all) amateur photographers lack, and that can make their criticisms more useful than some others. That doesn't make them "correct" in the same sense. Let's not make it out to be more than it is.

I'll use a musical analogy. There are reasons why musicians have conventions about chord progressions. Experience has taught what progressions are typically found pleasing by a specific type of audience and what progressions feel like a resolution. Truly innovative musicians sometimes put those rules aside. (A great example is Theolonius Monk.) This doesn't mean (in my opinion) that any old progression is as good as another, or that everyone should ignore the conventions, but it does mean that if a given convention doesn't meet the artist's goal, she should do something else.

[xpatUSA]

I frankly think this discussion is a bit of a red herring. Judging photographs is not like evaluating a mathematical proof, calculating the maximum surge created by turning on an electric motor, or--to bring this closer to home for me--figuring out whether a student has the correct error term in a statistical model. Well-trained judges have knowledge that many (not all) amateur photographers lack, and that can make their criticisms more useful than some others. That doesn't make them "correct" in the same sense. Let's not make it out to be more than it is.

Agreed.

I'll use a musical analogy. There are reasons why musicians have conventions about chord progressions. Experience has taught what progressions are typically found pleasing by a specific type of audience and what progressions feel like a resolution. Truly innovative musicians sometimes put those rules aside. (A great example is Theolonius Monk.) This doesn't mean (in my opinion) that any old progression is as good as another, or that everyone should ignore the conventions, but it does mean that if a given convention doesn't meet the artist's goal, she should do something else.

An excellent analogy, Dan.

[rpcrowe]

What disturbs me is when I notice a problem with an image and am too lazy to correct it... but, then other folks notcite it and I want to kick myself...