Judging Photos - your criteria?

When judges photos - what's your criteria?

What do you keep a mental score of? (Perhaps sub-consciously?)

Here's a few of mine:

Composition
Frame
Angle
Pose/subject
Colour

My criteria is keeping the picture as close as possible to whats been photographed. Yes some editing to clean a photo up is in my mind quite acceptable, but to throw it into something completely different is not worth taking it in the first place.

Bazza

I can partly agree with Bazza on this one. I know there is a purist argument, no heavily altered and photoshopped images. Indeed some rules of competitions etc will say so, but there is also an argument that all photography is an interpretation. We compose and frame what we want a viewer to see, we expose it such that we see silhouettes or all the detail, and yes we can clone or change colour. A landscape will also be changed by giving a timed exposure for running water or sky etc. Painters have always done the same. However I often don't like to see composite photographs where features have been added to make it fit a theme or whatever. No problem though with bringing out a good sky, dodging and burning which has always gone on.

As for judging, well I think you either have an eye for a picture or you don't. Some folks never will because I don't think it is really something you can learn, although you do fine tune your understanding. Of course not all of us understand all the genres of photography...maybe we can look at flowers, but aren't very good at understanding a good street picture. I have seen some great club competition judges who often have years of experience look at a picture for the first time and express their thoughts and understand how the picture is created, what doesn't quite work, what does, what could be improved. The composition has to be one of the biggest points, the timing, the technical interpretation...is there much room for improvement. In the world of photography competition, as much as I understand Bazza's point, there isn't much room for such purist thought. Almost every photograph is PP'd to a certain extent to bring it out to what would be interpreted as 'it's best'. However i am aware that quite a few judges don't like the PP to be too evident and look too unrealistic unless the picture is an obvious manipulation.

* some basic tehnical competency - ie good focus / exposure etc
* good control of light (eg, nothing blown, no nasty shadows, catchlights present in the eyes etc)
* composition
* that magical x factor that draws me into the picture - probablly couldn't explain what that is though! You just know a wow picture when you see one.

While the creative x factor is crucial for making a great picture, a level of technical competency is important too. For me, its not a wow picture if the focus is weak and its under exposed - its just a potentially good picture.

I think my little list is very similar to LM's

I also when *taking* the photo try to pay a great deal of attention to background, straightness of lines, diagonals, composition and light falling without shadows

xx

For me in order, composition and sharpness. That's it!! Angle, content, light and subject are all composition and not separate elements.

There is no such thing as an un processed digital photograph unless you shoot raw and resize. If you do you will have a flat and unsharp shot. A jpeg from a camera is processed, its semantics saying processing in photoshop means its not a true representation of the scene.

Photography is art, and the way that the author achieves their vision is irrelevant. There has been no famous 'tog that hasn't post processed, my fave for example Ansel Adams had people do it for him!

The dislike of PP seems to be a purely digital thing and there is nothing that is done in the 'shop that you can't do with work in the darkroom. Have a look at this site:

http://www.davebutcher.co.uk/

He gave a talk about his work at out camera club and talked about his PP work, which was extensive and a lot more time was spent on a shot than I ever do in the 'shop. He showed composites, cloning and heavily altered shots all done in the darkroom.

The closest to an unaltered shot is a print from boots from a film camera, and even this they will have a figgle.

I generally see the poorest images come from the people who spout off about pure and true images. It's just nonsense to claim to be a purist that doesn't edit, cause all shots are. Besides who wants their "art" to look bad out of some misguided belief in truth of the image, there is no truth only vision.

Spot on Ste!

I personally try to get it as right as possible in camera because I'm lazy and don't like spending hours in photoshop I expect that will continue to be the case! Maybe when I'm as good as Ansel Adams, someone will do it for me? hehe!

xx

Oooh yes - really well said Ste.
I also think the spouters often don't actually know much about good editing and make their point from ignorance.

I view images as a whole, composition, exposure,technicality, subject and for me one of the most important elements creativity. For me, photography is an art form, and expression of what we see around us. It's art so it's subjective, what floats your boat, may leave others cold, and that's totally fine.

Really not going to get into the whole photo shop argument again, except to say photographers have always used darkrooms, to enhance images either chemically or digitally. Think Ste raised some great points too.

What rot.

All processing from negative film has been altered as would be proved by sending the same negative to different printers.

Reversal film is the only film that is not altered in any way unless purposely as in cross processing etc.

Steve