Herschel Mair <herschelmair@xxxxxxxxx> writes: > I don't like the idea of a purely subjective /opinion-based > judgment. Then the criteria becomes: "What kind of pictures does > this judge like. OK I'll make those kind of pictures to win the > competition." > > This results in a boring, sameness and a reluctancy to try > anything new, hence stagnation. I see many camera-club images > where people are still trying to be Ansel Adams clones because the > judge has a thing for the zone system. I'm not sure I like the idea of "contests" in photography in the first place. But let me play Devil's advocate just a bit here -- if you have a range of judges, rather than always the same ones, then people are forced to try different things to try to appeal to the tastes of each individual judge. That's not stagnation, that's variety. And if, on the other hand, you have a fixed set of objective rules, it provides a perfect and absolute straight-jacket that prevents people from experimenting outside the boundaries they define (if they want to be competitive in the contest, that is). > I feel the results should be from informed and educated analysis > of the images. Sounds great, but where would one find a diverse group of informed and educated judges? :-) I'll skip a detailed critique of the form -- you're clearly already aware that a lot of the things you're marking on are subjective anyway. (The idea of asking judges to use such a system, so they're at least asked to think about the different areas in which a photo could be evaluated, does seem valuable.) > Get the finalists and sit and talk about the pictures. Use a > process of elimination. An image should stand on its own, no? And this also penalizes people who are shy or inarticulate (or perhaps advantages them if the judges are very forgiving). -- David Dyer-Bennet, <mailto:dd-b@xxxxxxxx>, <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/> RKBA: <http://www.dd-b.net/carry/> Pics: <http://dd-b.lighthunters.net/> <http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/> Dragaera/Steven Brust: <http://dragaera.info/>
