Marilin, You are asking a question with no simple answer. Having been a photo and art juror for art fairs, county fairs, clubs, schools, galleries, etc etc. as well as been judged for the same mix of shows I have a little experience. The simple answer: If you are entering your work never expect a non-photographer juror to know diddly about photographs. Journalists or commercial artists have their own slant too, so beware. Camera clubbers have a standardized system of picking (usually bad) photographs that fit some archaic, uniform global camera club criteria. Invite a camera club (whatever their national organization is called?) to your class and have them explain it. >From the perspective of the poor juror he or she has to measure the overall expectations of the sponsors. If you don't think you can please them don't do it. If the work tends to be in colored mattes look out! BTW If you haven't judged a fair you should - it's way weird! When I was on my city's arts council I was asked to do a large county fair. I assumed wrongly that I would only be doing the photography. I had to do all the arts and crafts, and literature. HUH! Never submit a poem to a contest where the juror is a photographer. Fortunately I knew my William Carlos Williams. "Imageist" poet - get it? Another fairly satisfactory experience I had was as a co-juror with a venerable, large metropolitan photo annual. There was a journalist, an art director for an ad agency, and me. I represented the academic perspective, I guess. We looked at a ton of pretty dern good pictures in several categories and came up with a fairly easy consensus. The evening of the awards we discussed the reasons for our choices and it was all very rewarding and pleasant for everyone. AZ Build a Lookaround! The Lookaround Book, 4Th ed. Now an E-book. http://www.panoramacamera.us > -------- Original Message -------- > Subject: any Judges Out There? > From: Marilyn <marilyn@xxxxxxxxxxx> > Date: Mon, April 10, 2006 12:15 pm > To: List for Photo/Imaging Educators - Professionals - Students > <photoforum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> > > > For those of you who have ever acted as judges for photography shows - would you be willing to share with me (so I can share with my class) what you look for when judging photographs, please? > > What makes a ribbon winning photograph? > > Thank you in advance. > > Marilyn > > > "Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality." > > The Dalai Lama
