Hi, just checking in 😉

[MichpixLondon]

Greetings from Kent/SE London (Bexley)

I've had a DSLR for just under 3 years, taught myself more or less, with a couple of pointers from Shaw Academy and a local adult Ed course (which was mostly an exercise in photographer-mingling lol, with those that couldn't figure out how to get their camera out of the box or set the date getting most of the tutor time etc)

I'm currently viewing this site on my Huawei Mate 20 Pro smartphone, and it doesn't seem to allow upload from a phone (is there an app???) so I can't post any photos til I get on my pc!

In the meantime I'm www.michpixlondon.co.uk (www.facebook.com/MichpixLondon)
www.flickr.com/Michpix_London please do scroll back as newer content has some smartphone images.

I started wanting just to know how to use this expensive camera I'd bought (only a Canon 750D but expensive enough for me!), having purchased it to take up a hobby for health reasons and ended up joining 2 local county-affiliated clubs and making my own local photography community (300+ strong with actual photographers eg not just people wanting to "look at the pictures"!
In my first year submitting to the KCPA, I had one of mine selected to the PAGB International Federation exhibition! (I didn't win of course, but it was a great honour to have had one of mine even in the same room with so many amazing images!)

I've gone from wanting to shoot some butterflies, to doing alot of portraits and now feeling my way into some Street photography.

I've become rather despondent with local camera club competitions as often the judges are not always constructive, and some this end come out with some odd things as of just trying to fill their few minutes with talk etc... Or you'll get amazing comments and then the score given later in no way reflects those comments... anyway it's been chipping away at my soul for the last cpl of years so I'm doing less now in an effort to regain my mojo lol

Ever progressing!
I'm hoping this site is more active than Flickr's become of late as just getting pictures faved gets old fast...

Look forward to chatting with a few of you hopefully 😀

Mich

[xpatUSA]

Greetings from Kent/SE London (Bexley)

...

Look forward to chatting with a few of you hopefully 

Mich

Welcome, Mich. I used to live in Lewisham near Bexley in the late 40's / early 50's and vaguely recall visiting the Heath as a boy. I've just now read that it's been built over ...

[pschlute]

Welcome, you have quite the eye for a good photograph.

[DanK]

Welcome to CiC. An interesting variety of photographs. I'm in your camp: I can't settle on one genre.

I've become rather despondent with local camera club competitions as often the judges are not always constructive,

Sorry to say that in my experience, that's common. There are lots of reasons, including differences in competence, differences in ability to communicate and teach, and simple differences in taste. I've had competent judges differ fundamentally in their evaluation of the same photograph. The same is true, in my experience, of comments by fellow amateurs. You'll undoubtedly find some helpful and others not.

However, what makes CiC stand out, in my opinion, is how helpful many of the participants want to be. I've learned a lot here, and I hope you will find it as productive as I have.

[Manfred M]

I've become rather despondent with local camera club competitions as often the judges are not always constructive, and some this end come out with some odd things as of just trying to fill their few minutes with talk etc... Or you'll get amazing comments and then the score given later in no way reflects those comments... anyway it's been chipping away at my soul for the last cpl of years so I'm doing less now in an effort to regain my mojo lol

Welcome to CiC Mich:

Let me give you the perspective of someone who is often sitting on the other side of the table when it comes to judging photography competitions. I'm a Canadian Association for Photographic Art (CAPA) trained judge who is currently working on completing my national certification.

All of the competitions I've judged are juried competitions where three judges evaluate each image, so the score is the cumulative view of three judges. Rules also require the competition chairperson to halt the judging when there is a significant difference in scoring or when extremely high or low scores are given by one of the judges. A discussion will follow and all three of the judges are allowed to update their scores based on the discussions.

Scoring is based on three factors - technical (colour, light, exposure, sharpness and technique), organizational (distractions, space and composition) and the emotional impact of the work(mood, impact, subject matter and imagination). The average time to score an image is between 10 and 20 seconds.

I've had the opportunity to work beside national and international level judges as well as photographers who are viewed as experts in particular photographic genres. The trained and certified judges are a pleasure to work with but the others are a highly variable group with some who are excellent and others who have no business judging.

The feedback session is also challenging. We are not given the scores that we assigned to the image when we are doing the feedback and often the actual judging occurred a week or more before. Trying to remember what our thoughts were when we scored an image is not easy and trying to sum up the strengths and weaknesses of an image in 20 or 30 seconds using language that is not confrontational and being constructive is challenging. These sessions last around two hours and often there are between 80 and 150 people in the room listening to what the judges have to say.

In general, we tend to look at between 200 and 300 images per competition, so when everything is looked at each judge has put between 4 and 6 hours of his or her time into the judging process for every competition. We are not paid for this time, although there is sometimes are fairly small honorarium paid to compensate us for fuel and parking charges.

That being said, I am the chairman of one of the local photography clubs and am on the executive of another. The quality of judging and comments made about the images are things I hear about fairly regularly. Some judges are not invited back... Sometimes we see entries do so-so in one competition and do extremely well in others. In spite of trying to take opinion out of the judging process as much as possible, in the end, the judge's views are just their opinion....

[MichpixLondon]

Thanks, sorry i've only just seen this

[MichpixLondon]

Welcome to CiC Mich:

Let me give you the perspective of someone who is often sitting on the other side of the table when it comes to judging photography competitions. I'm a Canadian Association for Photographic Art (CAPA) trained judge who is currently working on completing my national certification.

All of the competitions I've judged are juried competitions where three judges evaluate each image, so the score is the cumulative view of three judges. Rules also require the competition chairperson to halt the judging when there is a significant difference in scoring or when extremely high or low scores are given by one of the judges. A discussion will follow and all three of the judges are allowed to update their scores based on the discussions.

Scoring is based on three factors - technical (colour, light, exposure, sharpness and technique), organizational (distractions, space and composition) and the emotional impact of the work(mood, impact, subject matter and imagination). The average time to score an image is between 10 and 20 seconds.

I've had the opportunity to work beside national and international level judges as well as photographers who are viewed as experts in particular photographic genres. The trained and certified judges are a pleasure to work with but the others are a highly variable group with some who are excellent and others who have no business judging.

The feedback session is also challenging. We are not given the scores that we assigned to the image when we are doing the feedback and often the actual judging occurred a week or more before. Trying to remember what our thoughts were when we scored an image is not easy and trying to sum up the strengths and weaknesses of an image in 20 or 30 seconds using language that is not confrontational and being constructive is challenging. These sessions last around two hours and often there are between 80 and 150 people in the room listening to what the judges have to say.

In general, we tend to look at between 200 and 300 images per competition, so when everything is looked at each judge has put between 4 and 6 hours of his or her time into the judging process for every competition. We are not paid for this time, although there is sometimes are fairly small honorarium paid to compensate us for fuel and parking charges.

That being said, I am the chairman of one of the local photography clubs and am on the executive of another. The quality of judging and comments made about the images are things I hear about fairly regularly. Some judges are not invited back... Sometimes we see entries do so-so in one competition and do extremely well in others. In spite of trying to take opinion out of the judging process as much as possible, in the end, the judge's views are just their opinion....

Hi,
apologies I missed these comments before, not sure if I need to setup a notifications alert or something(?) - the judging i'm referring to is just one single judge in a local club...I have had my images judged in probably the UK version of what you described (it was more like "Britain's Got Talent" with 3 judges with their buzzers and equivalent of the Golden Buzzer lol) and that isn't as bad as what are the odds that THREE people are all going to love the exact thing? ...it's more the single judges who are totally inconsistent I find irritating. Especially when they don't say one bad thing about your image, but then score it 16/20 etc....I'm happy to take constructive criticism, and some judges have said valid things and i've thought "wow I never even noticed that before" etc...but some either just come up with daft things that either make no sense or are just said to fill a gap etc... some have said ridiculous things, one guy said "Just what was this person thinking?!?!" and that was about that club's top photographer of the year,TWO years running's photo (I felt alot better about my horrendous 12/20 when said top photographer got an 11/20 as well, I can tell you lol!) ...and yes I get that it's relative...and subjective....but some of the judges I've experienced seem to have well forgotten what it's like to be the other end of it and don't even seem to care if they're literally tearing you a new one!
Obviously, present company excluded

[MichpixLondon]

Welcome to CiC. An interesting variety of photographs. I'm in your camp: I can't settle on one genre.



Sorry to say that in my experience, that's common. There are lots of reasons, including differences in competence, differences in ability to communicate and teach, and simple differences in taste. I've had competent judges differ fundamentally in their evaluation of the same photograph. The same is true, in my experience, of comments by fellow amateurs. You'll undoubtedly find some helpful and others not.

However, what makes CiC stand out, in my opinion, is how helpful many of the participants want to be. I've learned a lot here, and I hope you will find it as productive as I have.

Hi Dank,
glad it's not just me lol

[MichpixLondon]

Welcome, Mich. I used to live in Lewisham near Bexley in the late 40's / early 50's and vaguely recall visiting the Heath as a boy. I've just now read that it's been built over ...

Hi,
I'm afraid the place I live in wasn't even built until 69-70 lol.... I imagine Texas has to be preferable to Lewisham?? unfortunately it's a bit rough now ...although alot of London's suburbia has gone that way

[xpatUSA]

Hi,
I'm afraid the place I live in wasn't even built until 69-70 lol....

Meanwhile, when I "flew" (Google Maps) over 243, High St, Lewisham, our building was gone.

I imagine Texas has to be preferable to Lewisham??

That it is. I bought some wooded acreage and built a shack and a barn, all very rural.

unfortunately Lewisham's a bit rough now ... although a lot of London's suburbia has gone that way.

Sad to hear, but I'm not surprised. Oh well ...

[Manfred M]

Hi,
apologies I missed these comments before, not sure if I need to setup a notifications alert or something(?) - the judging i'm referring to is just one single judge in a local club...I have had my images judged in probably the UK version of what you described (it was more like "Britain's Got Talent" with 3 judges with their buzzers and equivalent of the Golden Buzzer lol) and that isn't as bad as what are the odds that THREE people are all going to love the exact thing? ...it's more the single judges who are totally inconsistent I find irritating. Especially when they don't say one bad thing about your image, but then score it 16/20 etc....I'm happy to take constructive criticism, and some judges have said valid things and i've thought "wow I never even noticed that before" etc...but some either just come up with daft things that either make no sense or are just said to fill a gap etc... some have said ridiculous things, one guy said "Just what was this person thinking?!?!" and that was about that club's top photographer of the year,TWO years running's photo (I felt alot better about my horrendous 12/20 when said top photographer got an 11/20 as well, I can tell you lol!) ...and yes I get that it's relative...and subjective....but some of the judges I've experienced seem to have well forgotten what it's like to be the other end of it and don't even seem to care if they're literally tearing you a new one!
Obviously, present company excluded

That is understood. I've had the "opportunity" to judge at an event where a judge gave an extremely low score and the other two judges (I was one of them) gave a significantly higher score. The image, as I recall, was good but not great. Under the judging rules, the competition chair stopped the process and the judge was asked to explain his scoring. His answer was along the lines of "that's not how I would have shot it". I had heard that from other judges too. These people should not be judging as they have not learned to see that others look at a scene differently than they do.

Nor is there any excuse for a judge making inappropriate comments. They should give the photographer the benefit of the doubt.