One of the core principles of the Silver Spring Camera Club is fellowship: a setting for people with a shared interest to come together and interact with respect to photography. And that shared interest begets friendship. Some of us are amateur hobbyists and some have attained professional skill. Its secondary goals include education, mentoring, photography shoots in a variety of settings, the promotion of photography as an art form, and finally to compete.

The techniques of art analysis and criticism of photography are made more difficult due to any current developments in photography, post-processing and contemporary aesthetics.

So, enter the judge.  My Encarta College Dictionary defines the “judge” as someone who pronounces officially on entries in a competition, or who assesses the quality of something or who forms an opinion after thought or consideration.  Basically, the judge’s task is to award merit to an image based on implicit rules (thirds, composition, color value, etc.), or other artistic components, and whether the photograph fulfills or falls short of them. The judge may also try to discern the intent or creative vision of the photographer. A number of subjective elements enter into photographic critique: personal biases, experience, taste, or values. Contrast this with analysis. My Encarta College Dictionary defines the verb “analyzing” as the process of separating something into its constituents in order to find out what it contains, or the identification and measurement of a substance or specimen.

Competitions are not analytical or rigorously objective, reducing photographs to a strictly numeric process, where different judges would likely reach the same conclusion. If we established criteria in a check-list form, such as is the subject in focus, is depth of field rendered, does composition effectively draw attention to something of interest in the image, is there color balance, and created a rating system from 1 to 10, would we be any closer to a more consistent, balanced and structured outcome? This could be more analytical, but would it be necessarily feasible?  Typically, our competitions are informal and unstructured. In other words, critiquing photo competitions is not similar to a statistical review of clinical data using methodologically sound techniques.  Even if we attempted to apply a structured review process for a photo contest, it might reduce some bias but it would remain subjective based on the judge’s view points. The competitor’s subjectivity will always be in conflict with the judge’s subjectivity.

What would constitute a failed judging of a contest?  Examples would be if the judge was fundamentally ignorant of depth of field, composition, or other fundamentals, if the judge did not know how to apply these principles, or if they were applied inconsistently.  Absent one of these modes of judging failure, it is a competitor’s disagreement with the judge to the intrinsic subjectivity of the process and not a failure of the process.

Let me end with this parable. A girlfriend asks her boyfriend “Am I pretty?”  He answers “You’re hardworking, athletic, well-read, etc.”  But she breaks down and cries because he didn’t say she was pretty. Perhaps, she shouldn’t have asked the question.  If you submit a photo and the judge doesn’t say it’s “pretty”, don’t take it personally  . . .