[microlight]

Hope you guys are keeping well. My niece in Auckland has been keeping us up with the situation there.

Hey Mark, I thought you had a back-up (APS-C) camera?

[Kiwizinho]

We figured the year is stuffed for mounted prints and the associated scoring system. We intend to try and keep up the DPIs (electronic images) but I doubt a fair scoring system can be built out of it. Personally i don't worry about the overall scores - just like the peer review. We normally have a mounted print exhibition in October or so in a local gallery. I suspect we will jazz that up into a larger celebration of our years work this time.

Sounds familiar. Our club has a bit of tension between a few who are highly competitive, and others who just enjoy the critique.

We normally have both a digital and print competition each month, but many people only enter digital. Points are awarded for anything that's an acceptance or better, and we have both a set subject and open subject, but it's up to members to decide whether their images are set or open, but set subject images get more points, so there's an incentive to give the set subjects a go.
We score as follows: Set subject: honours 8, merit, 5, acceptance, 2 Open: honours 5, merit 2, acceptance 1. Non acceptances don't get anything.

We currently just use PSNZ judges, but we're looking at whether we could also come up with some kind of internal judging.

I'm currently club president, webmaster and competition secretary, and I've been trying to get out of some or all of them by the AGM later this year. To reduce my workload long term, thankfully, just last month I switched to a fully web based system that's largely automated and got every member set up with their own web login, so I'm close to being able to make most of the competition secretary role redundant. It was quite a lot of hours of coding, but I thought it was worth it if it meant I could walk away from the competition secretary role, and know that things could keep running smoothly.

If any of this sounds useful for your club, PM me.

[zkarj]

I've long been able to work from home when needed, but always prefer the commute. Fresh air and walking every day is a good thing. Now I make do with a walk from home in the evening after I knock off.

It's interesting watching some teams at work struggling to deal with working from home when it is so normal to me. In fact, in my team of 6, we're spread across 3 cities anyway and most members work from home one scheduled day a week. So on Wednesdays and Thursdays we were routinely working from 5 different locations, now it's 6. Not a huge change in team dynamics.

On the photography front, I've barely had the camera out this year except early on. I have, however, been back and reprocessed a lot of photos using DxO PhotoLab 3. The sharpness it can pull from my well-shot photos still astounds me. I've just finished re-doing my whole Singapore album, but where it really shines is the aircraft shots. I think I already mentioned some of those results here, from the reprocessed Wings Over Wairarapa 2015 album.

[GUB]

Sounds familiar. Our club has a bit of tension between a few who are highly competitive, and others who just enjoy the critique.

We normally have both a digital and print competition each month, but many people only enter digital. Points are awarded for anything that's an acceptance or better, and we have both a set subject and open subject, but it's up to members to decide whether their images are set or open, but set subject images get more points, so there's an incentive to give the set subjects a go.
We score as follows: Set subject: honours 8, merit, 5, acceptance, 2 Open: honours 5, merit 2, acceptance 1. Non acceptances don't get anything.

We currently just use PSNZ judges, but we're looking at whether we could also come up with some kind of internal judging.

I'm currently club president, webmaster and competition secretary, and I've been trying to get out of some or all of them by the AGM later this year. To reduce my workload long term, thankfully, just last month I switched to a fully web based system that's largely automated and got every member set up with their own web login, so I'm close to being able to make most of the competition secretary role redundant. It was quite a lot of hours of coding, but I thought it was worth it if it meant I could walk away from the competition secretary role, and know that things could keep running smoothly.

If any of this sounds useful for your club, PM me.

We have just had a change of competition collator in our club. I have inherited part of his workload in that I collate the mounted prints. A reasonable number per month ie last years "portraiture" attracted 42 prints. I was a little horrified to find out how much cut and pasting (or typing out) the forms required. We have a total year points spreadsheet that doesn't play that nicely with the judges/results sheet. But I have created a Template for initial collation of prints that cut be easily cut and pasted to the master as well as the judging sheets. Looks like it will work for the DPIs too.
Our scoring system resembles yours and I grumble loudly about the "opens" getting a lesser score. I don't believe being a "performing seal" and conforming to the club's subject is conducive to your photographic development. But I do acknowledge that it encourages the newbies to contribute. Also at those times that when a specialised judge is used (in our case a forest and bird type for Natural History) the open prints don't get a fair whack.
For economics sake we are now tending to use groups of 2 or 3 club members (roster) to do the judging of the mounted prints. Many of our members have attended PSNZ Bruce Girdwoods excellent judging courses. So due to the inevitable bias I used to grumble about this too, preferring outside review. But I now realise that the current process works well in the other direction in that our judging members (myself included) are learning vast amounts that spill over into personal confidence and the ability to critique their own work. And at the end of the day the result boils down to personal preference anyway. So lucky dip no matter how skilled the Judge is.

[Kiwizinho]

We have just had a change of competition collator in our club. I have inherited part of his workload in that I collate the mounted prints. A reasonable number per month ie last years "portraiture" attracted 42 prints. I was a little horrified to find out how much cut and pasting (or typing out) the forms required. We have a total year points spreadsheet that doesn't play that nicely with the judges/results sheet. But I have created a Template for initial collation of prints that cut be easily cut and pasted to the master as well as the judging sheets. Looks like it will work for the DPIs too.
Our scoring system resembles yours and I grumble loudly about the "opens" getting a lesser score. I don't believe being a "performing seal" and conforming to the club's subject is conducive to your photographic development. But I do acknowledge that it encourages the newbies to contribute. Also at those times that when a specialised judge is used (in our case a forest and bird type for Natural History) the open prints don't get a fair whack.
For economics sake we are now tending to use groups of 2 or 3 club members (roster) to do the judging of the mounted prints. Many of our members have attended PSNZ Bruce Girdwoods excellent judging courses. So due to the inevitable bias I used to grumble about this too, preferring outside review. But I now realise that the current process works well in the other direction in that our judging members (myself included) are learning vast amounts that spill over into personal confidence and the ability to critique their own work. And at the end of the day the result boils down to personal preference anyway. So lucky dip no matter how skilled the Judge is.

Wow! That's a lot of prints. We're lucky if we get 10 a month, although for special subjects, landscape and natural history we get around 20 or so. Five years ago, I inherited a cut and paste system that was a nightmare, and handling of competitions took something like a full day and was error prone. As an act of self-preservation, I wrote a Microsoft Access database that semi-automated the process, and a web entry form that checked for properly sized images, and forced them into a standardised file name format. I also had the Access database programmed to automatically generate a Powerpoint at the click of a button once I entered the results.
I had someone else prepared to take over this year, however they are a Mac user, and that meant my Access database wouldn't work for them, so I decided to bite the bullet and make the entire system web based so it wouldn't matter what OS people are on, Mac, PC, Linux, iOS whatever.

Interesting your feedback on having club members judging. I wondered whether it might encourage people to get better at critiquing their own work, and you've pretty much confirmed what I thought.

[MarkJerling]

Hope you guys are keeping well. My niece in Auckland has been keeping us up with the situation there.

Hey Mark, I thought you had a back-up (APS-C) camera?

Martyn, I gave the K5 to my daughter, Annabelle, as she needs it for her fashion design course. Lack of film stock means I'm completely out of luck at the moment!

[GUB]

Interesting your feedback on having club members judging. I wondered whether it might encourage people to get better at critiquing their own work, and you've pretty much confirmed what I thought.

Yeah but run a PSNZ course in your area first. it is all about constructive judging. The last thing you need is club members being negative about other members work.

EDIT one of the biases I mentioned earlier is often a club judge recognises a certain person's work. (There is often giveaways like recycled matts etc.). It is not so much about petty meanness but rather a tendency to judge that person's work to a standard that one is used to getting from that person.

[GUB]

Promotional image for Waitotara Beauty Products.

[NZ_Ross]

Hi all, given the recent discussion on photo comps I thought some of you might find this video by Zack Arias interesting

You Tube

You Tube

Cheers

Ross

[GUB]

Hi all, given the recent discussion on photo comps I thought some of you might find this video by Zack Arias interesting

Zack Arias Video

Cheers

Ross

Thanks Ross - I watched it. But that type of judging is almost the exact opposite of what we try to do. They have the luxury of saying yes /no with no justification needed and end up with say 5 selected and 5000 rejected. We have to pass comment on all pictures good and bad, and these comments have to pass muster and above all be constructive. Basically compliment compliment compliment with the occasional criticism snuck in. And the final grading of the image tends to be a little more subjective hoping that the entrant doesn't notice too much disparity.

[NZ_Ross]

Thanks Ross - I watched it. But that type of judging is almost the exact opposite of what we try to do.

I thought that would be the case GUB. I found Zacks discussion of what makes a good photo interesting.

[microlight]

I gave the K5 to my daughter

Looks like we both did the same thing - I gave my K-5 to my son!

[MarkJerling]

Looks like we both did the same thing - I gave my K-5 to my son!

Does he enjoy using it?

[Kiwizinho]

Thanks Ross - I watched it. But that type of judging is almost the exact opposite of what we try to do. They have the luxury of saying yes /no with no justification needed and end up with say 5 selected and 5000 rejected. We have to pass comment on all pictures good and bad, and these comments have to pass muster and above all be constructive. Basically compliment compliment compliment with the occasional criticism snuck in. And the final grading of the image tends to be a little more subjective hoping that the entrant doesn't notice too much disparity.

Same here. We've actually started de-emphasising our 'competitions' as competitions, but referring to them more as critiques, because especially for beginning photographers, what they want more than anything is constructive criticism that can help them improve their photography.
The video mentions professionals, but club photography is a real mix from absolute beginners to professionals. Interestingly, sometimes professional photographers don't do any better in club photography than amateurs, as what a client will pay for and what stands out to a judge aren't necessarily the same thing.

I'm sort of middle of the road myself. I certainly don't make a living from photography, but have derived some income from photography through a couple of books I've published. In that case I combined poetry and photography, and the former is probably even more subjective than photography, but I figured out that words and images are highly complimentary, and the emotional impact that you hear both photography and poetry judges going on about is enhanced when you've got some words to give emotional impact to an image, and vice versa. Of course you can't do that in club competitions, but I've found it does sell, to the point of getting a sizeable order from the local council.

I can do well in club competitions if I want to, but sometimes to be quite honest, I'm not sure if I do want to, as a big part of what I want to do is tell an authentic story, and if I'm having to manipulate an image to please a judge, then I'd question whether the image is actually authentic anymore.

[GUB]

I can do well in club competitions if I want to, but sometimes to be quite honest, I'm not sure if I do want to, as a big part of what I want to do is tell an authentic story, and if I'm having to manipulate an image to please a judge, then I'd question whether the image is actually authentic anymore.

That is sort of why I don't particularly like the monthly subject thing. It becomes about pleasing rather than presenting.