Judge not that thou be not judged!

I'm an old man now, and it's probably difficult for my friends and colleagues to believe that I was the Shane Warne of my time (leg spin and first slip, but perhaps not as good) and later, the Dicky Bird of my time, (but perhaps not quite as good an umpire as him).  I mention this because in the past I have been a public arbiter of rules.  It probably came about because our Games Master, Illtyd Pearce (ex- Llanelli and Wales Rugby Union) realised that I had sunk through so many cricket elevens that I had fallen out of the bottom of the lowest eleven.  I was therefore only good enough to be an umpire.  All a cricket umpire has to do is follow the Laws of Cricket and rule on them.  OK, then.  Just to be going on with.  How many Laws are there?  How many ways can a batsman be out?  Not as easy as you'd think, is it?  And photo judging has the artistic element added as well.

When I was about seventeen, the unthinkable happened.  One of our first XI batsmen was given out, but he continued to stand for five or six seconds before he walked.  The Headmaster gave him a stroke of the cane, and next morning in assembly the HM made the bizarre but absolutely true statement that the Umpire is right even when he is wrong.  And this is equally true for football referees and photographic judges.  We may differ in our opinions, but if we invite a person in to critique our work, we should listen to what they say, and possibly learn more about our work.  this is not to say there are not bad judges.  There are some stinkers.  I can think of one who will never critique my work again.  I hope our FCC has a program to improve the standards of the comparatively few judges that fall seriously short.  For reasons good and bad, our NSW judges seem to discount photographs of other photographers, pelicans, works of art, the Sydney Opera House, the Sydney Harbour Bridge and cloudless skies, so I made a gently critical but hopefully humorous AV, which ended with some of my favourite shots.  Many of these are not good technically, but mean something to me.  A photograph does not need to have an award or even deserve an award to mean something to the author.  Here is a link to this masterpiece.  Unfortunately, there is no link to bring you back automatically, so you will have to come back to this blog the long way round.

http://youtu.be/rwD6siI6foA

Imagine you are a judge.  What would you have to say about these next two pictures, and would you give them awards?  Could you explain why you did or did not award either of the pics?  What indeed are these photographs depicting?

 

 

Well, the top one is a crease in an inflatable tent.  Would that affect your judgment?  If I were judging the second one, what would I say?  Lose the lights.  No real composition.  Background too indistinct.  Not sure the yellow and purple achieves anything.  If I had taken the second one, by now I would be thinking that the judge is a total idiot.  Can't he recognise the ionisation field which occurs for a few milliseconds around a lightning strike when he sees one?

 

 

One of the problems is that so often there is a mismatch between the knowledge and experience of the judge and photographer.

 

 

 

Not all NSW judges have been to London even though I am sure there would be a campaign for an educational trip if it could be arranged at a suitable price.  So not all of them are aware that this is Trafalgar Square, with Nelson on his Corinthian column looking down Whitehall, and a poignant statue of a pregnant thalidomide mother on the Fourth Plinth.  The Fourth Plinth is becoming justly famous for its modern art.  For years it just stood empty, with the other three supporting Imperial Nonentities.  A NSW Judge might quite simply see this as a composition of two works of art.  S/he might miss the connection between the missing limbs and the overcoming of personal adversity.

 

 

 

Solarised M & Ms on a glass table top.  What could a judge say about them?  What could you say about them?  For that matter, what could I say about them?  And yet a judge has to find something to say about them, in a short time, in front of quite a lot of people.

 

 

 

I knew (somehow!) that we'd eventually get around to pelicans.  I think that most of us, if we were critiquing the above picture, would see it as an ordinary pelican picture.  the sort of picture that anyone with a camera might take while on holiday.  Not a photograph that you would expect to be special enough to be seen in a photographic exhibition.  Technically, the background is awful, and is still too much in focus to make it look less awful.  I took that photo.

 

 

Now my wife and I were married by a clergyman who was dressed a little bit like this pelican.  This bird is wearing a near black cassock with a white surplice, and I can almost imagine him about to start a service with "Dearly Beloved, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places . . ."  There is a comic transformation of bird into clergyman which most judges would see.  The background is uncluttered.  There is much to comment on.

 

 

 

We are having a competition soon on Flora and Fauna.  I might just enter this.  It is literally a black and white rendition of some wind blown grass.  Being minimalist it means all things to all people, even if they are different things.  A judge should relish such images, his ideas are as valid as yours, but of course, the value he puts upon them may be different.

 

 





 



This is the other end of the equation.  Everything is on show here.  There is very little room for manoeuvre in the ideas department, but some words might be said about the technical handling of the picture, which I rather like.  And that may be something which I hadn't seen, which pops the pride a bit, but makes sure that future pictures are just that little bit better.

I make no secret of it.  I love it when a judge puts a Merit next to my name.  I'm ecstatic when I can say going home that I got two Merits and two Highly Commendeds that evening.  It shows that I am doing something right and that other independent photographers think so.  But I've never been a points chaser.  I'm not even quite sure how many points you get for what.  The best judge in the room doesn't give points, though.  YOU are that person, because it is YOU who can see how your photos stack up against everyone else's.  And as for the Judge at the front, who often has an hour's travel before he gets home again that night . . . 

Just remember, he's always right, even when he's wrong!