This month I tried my hand at judging our Camera Club entries. What a difficult thing that is, but SO interesting! There's a subjective component, of course, but there are also "rules" for judging.
Our club uses a 6-point scale. With three judges scoring each photo, it's possible to get a perfect 18 points. We're divided into bronze, silver or gold categories, so the divisions allow members to grow and advance, with the chance of earning awards at the end of the year. Each competition is themed, and a person can enter a total of 6 images, spread between the Assigned Category, Open Category, and Enhanced Category (digitally manipulated in some way).
This month's theme was Black and White, so the entries in the Assigned Category had to be Black and White images. You can enter anything (B&W or Color) in the Open Category. The same holds true in Enhanced.
There were so many great images. If you want to see the type of photos members of our club take, and read our newsletter, check out our web site: http://sjccmich.tripod.com/.
The photos within this blog entry are a sampling of what we submitted this month. Another point about judging which you need to know is that we don't score our own, or family member's, photos. We have electronic scoring, so when the familiar photograph comes up we simply enter a "0" for the score. The score of the other two judges is averaged, and I believe there's a formula which rounds up.Though it can be crazy trying to get photographs around for competition, which includes any tweaking you want, or need to do (like turning color photos to B&W), and resizing, it's worth it. We show all photographs, either prints or digital submissions, judges submit the scores, then after all have been viewed we go back through them, announcing the photographer and his/her score, and then critique the photos. That's the most valuable aspect of the competition, I think.
So, enjoy the photos, and push yourself to new levels by creating your own competitions. Choose a subject and shoot it from all angles, or try black and white, or try some manipulation. What ever you do - enjoy it!
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