PPA certified judging at PPSO print competition

It was exciting to hear three certified judges assign various images scores to prints presented on a large color corrected monitor. A score of 80 or above is a merit print.

As I said in my last post, I had entered 7 images into the competition. Last night two of those seven prints were judged to be merit prints. There were approximately 50 entries along with 5-6 album entries. Out the fifty or so prints it seemed like there were about 15 or so that achieved merit status. I did not keep tabs on the exact numbers of anything. Each print was scored then one or more of the judges would comment on what they liked and didn’t like about the print. If the judges scores were more than a few points different, then either the low scoring judge would challenge the higher scoring judge or the higher scoring judge would challenge the low scoring judge. They would discuss their differences and then re-score the print. Sometimes minds would be changed and other times the scores would stay the same.

Here is one of my entries that achieved merit status. It is framed in black in a horizontal format to fill the monitor screen during the judging. Suggestions to improve the score on this image (perhaps to a higher merit status)  included completely removing the picnic table and cloning out every small stray hair on the subject. The title of the image was, “The eyes are the windows to the soul.”

I found that sitting through the judging of 50+ images was very instructive and challenging as I knew it would be. This is one of the many ways that PPSO (Professional Photographers of SW Ohio) encourages its members to become better photographers each day. If you are a photographer in SW Ohio (from Troy to Dayton, from Dayton to Cincinnati and throughout the region) I would encourage you to consider joining this group or a similar group in your area. The web site is currently being rebuilt (sorry for the mess) http://www.ppso.org You can also email me with questions if you like.

Last, if you are a photographer and you have entered your work into judged competition, was it a learning experience for you? Were you able to watch the judging? Please comment below (or click on the “leave comment” link near the title.