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Southern Exposure is the official publication of SEPPA
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Degrees of Photographic Excellence require that your work is recognized and reward-ed by your professional peers for both artistic and technical excellence. It seems easy for some people to earn Golds or Merits, but for most of us, it’s a lot of hard work that often doesn’t pay off the way we hoped it would.
Sometimes our images almost make it, but pushing them that last couple of points seems almost impossible to achieve. I’d like to share some hints that I’ve learned during my many years of working with Exhibition Imaging:
1. Shoot to win. Some image-makers select their competition images from client sessions (great for them!) but most plan and shoot for competition because the end goals are different. Clients care about nice expressions, wall appeal and clothing, props and environments that are personally meaningful. Judges care about Emotional Impact, Composition, Lighting, Body Posture, Color Harmony, Clothing and Prop Choic-es, Image Quality, Expression, Artistic and Technical Mastery, Quality of Retouching, and Image Presentation. One of my wise friends once said, “I can’t serve two Masters simultaneously. I can serve my client, or I can serve myself, but in trying to serve both, I give neither my best.” It is true for me as well; when I photograph clients, I’m trying to give them what they want and need. When I photograph for myself I want what I want.
2. Select the right images with a critical and impartial eye and if you can’t do it;
How to Score Your BestJane Connor-ziser
get other people to help you.
Judges don’t know your cute children and they can seem quite harsh in critiqu-ing images that are emotionally important to you.
They don’t care how hard it was for you to get the shot, what limitations you were working with in equipment and lighting, or what was there that prevented you from composing it perfectly.
Many successful competitors form small groups of peers to share ideas and imag-es with on a regular basis, and though the final selections are your decision to make, it’s easier when you have the input of oth-ers to consider along with what you think and feel yourself. If you know that you have a Fatal Flaw in your image, don’t en-ter it hoping that the judges won’t notice.
They will.
If you have to reshoot, do it.
It is important to know the judging crite-ria for the competition in order for you to select images that will powerfully perform in each point of criteria.
Here are some links to two of the top world image competition’s judging criteria for you to consider when selecting images that will do a good job for you:
http://www.ppa.com/competitions/con-tent.cfm?ItemNumber=1792
http://www.swpp.co.uk/photograph-ic-competitions/what-the-judges-are-look-ing-for.htm
If you have the opportunity to look at
previous winning images, do it – check out the competition and get a feel for what the judges like. A great image is a great image regardless of where it’s viewed but the sociological preferences, or preferred “flavors” of images are different in differ-ent associations and different parts of the world.
It is common for high scoring images from one association’s judging not to do well in the other.
3. Once your images are selected, pre-imagine your final images before you start preparing them, from Crop to Pre-sentation. This doesn’t mean you can’t let the creation flow, but it’s easier to have a general idea of how the underlay and presentation might boost the crop and balance of the image rather than trying to make something fit an already finished piece.
Don’t forget that you can stretch images, add background space and position the underlay off to one side or the other in order to compensate for less than perfect camera crop.
4. If you’re not a retouching expert, hire someone who is. Poor cloning, blurry skin, overly sharpened eyes, poor edg-es and composites made from multiple images of varying resolutions significantly count against you.
On the flip side, beautiful retouching and image enhancements can buy you a lot of points. It is said that you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, but with the capability of today’s imaging software, I beg to differ.
Retouching isn’t just for touch ups and
Jane Connor-ziser, cont’d...
smoothing skin anymore; it’s a powerful medium for taking images way beyond what a camera can capture, even if no actual retouching is required.
If your imaging and retouching skills are not at expert level, you might want to en-list some help because your work is going up against that of some of the best artists in the world.
5. Sweat the presentation. The presen-tation should enhance the composition, color harmony and style of the image.
If the image is soft, the presentation should also be soft. If the image is sharp, the presentation should match the mood.
In addition, the presentation should stay in the background with no element that grabs attention away from what you want the judges to focus on. If the judging is digital, and most of them are these days, try to find out what the screen back-ground color will be. It’s usually black or gray but it’s important to know because if you will be using a black underlay and the screen is also black, your underlay will disappear and you won’t have the ben-efit you achieved with your image place-ment. (You can add a minimal inner glow to the underlay, white for black screens, black or white for gray screens, so the judges will know where your image actu-ally ends in these cases.)
Ask questions so you won’t be unpleasant-ly surprised.
6. Titles can give you points, take points away or just lie there and do noth-ing for you. Titles should be short and to the point. Try to come up with titles that enhance the feeling of your image rather
than going against it or bringing in some-thing that doesn’t belong.
For instance, if there is a lot of wind, choose a title that feels windy. If there is no wind, don’t include the word wind in the title or the judges will start looking for wind.
One recent image that comes to mind is a title “Just the Two of Us” for an image in which there were a total of six people – I know there were six people because I was one of the judges that was compelled to stop and count them because the title said there were only two.
We were confused and I’m sure the print didn’t get extra points for the title. Titles can also explain things that a judge might not like, for example, if a Portrait of a Group entry contains people that are not relating to each other, consider a title that explains why.
Don’t be afraid to change people’s names in order to make the image more appealing. Funny titles can buy you points but don’t guarantee a Gold on images that otherwise don’t deserve it … in a pinch, it’s worth a try.
And finally, rather than use your title to present a personal or political opinion, choose a title that pertains to the subject and let the viewer form their own opinion based upon it.
7. Prior to uploading your entries, sleep on them for a couple of days and then re-examine them to make sure you haven’t missed anything. You want to feel confident that you’ve achieved the very best image execution at every level. Go back and read the judging criteria for
Jane Connor-ziser, cont’d...
the competition and evaluate how you believe your image holds up. The judges will form an opinion within about 3 sec-onds, so everything you do must point in the same emotional direction in order to garner maximum impact.
8. Make sure you read the submission information and do exactly what is need-ed. Not every competition requires the same file size and resolution and most of them require specific naming criteria.
Type it once and check it twice to ensure your entries won’t be disqualified because you didn’t upload them correctly. Then breathe, and let go. You’ve done your best.
Here’s how the competition generally un-folds from the judges’ point of view:
When an image comes up, a judge will take a few seconds to “feel” the emotion-al impact of the image, then start looking for the technical strengths and weakness-es. If categories of excellence are provid-ed, such as:
PPA Judging Categories USA = Excep-tional (100-95), Superior (94-90), Excellent (89-85), Deserving of Merit (84-80), Above Average (79-76), Average (75-74), Fair (73-70), Unacceptable (69-0)
SWPP Judging Categories UK = Gold (highest standard), Silver (above stan-dard), Bronze (acceptable), Unaccept-able (below standard)
… the judge will likely place the image in the category he/she feels is appropriate for the image based upon his/her opinion and knowledge. If a numerical score is available, the judge’s score will position
the image high or low within the category.
For instance, in the USA, if a judge feels that an image is Excellent, the score will be between 85-89 points. If the judge feels that it barely makes Excellent, the score will likely be 85. If the judge feels it’s a solid Excellent, the score will be 82-84, and if the judge feels it is almost Superior (the next category up) the score will be 89.
In the UK, the judges don’t assign numer-ical scores; they place the image in the overall category they feel accurately rep-resents the image’s impact and technical excellence.
In the USA, image competitions are held periodically at local, state and regional levels and are live events for which 3-5 judges are provided.
The images receive numerical scores and judges are allowed to challenge scores that they feel are too high or two low. Images that are challenged have the opportunity to go up or down in score depending on how the discussion goes regarding it. Images that receive merits at the regional level may be entered in the national competition with the merit intact.
National judging is not a formal live event with a group. Individual judges assign cat-egories of Loan Collection, Merit or “not”, plus provide critiques of the images if the makers pre-request it.
This means that competitors for PPA com-petitions have the opportunity to enter im-ages they are considering at the local lev-el, rework or replace them according to how they do and what the judges’ inputs are, enter them again at state, rework or replace again, enter them at regional,
Jane Connor-ziser, cont’d...
where the hope is that they will all merit before going on to national … where the hope is that they will go Loan.
Serious competitors take full advantage of these options, so their images that make it to national judging have been polished and refined for up to a year!
The UK hosts 11 monthly competitions that are judged via Internet by individual inter-national judges.
Images that receive Gold standards are printed in their magazine, Professional Imagemaker, that is published 6 times per year.
Images that receive Silver are reviewed every 3 months with the potential of being upgraded to Gold. Every December all Gold images are judged by a live panel of judges, with discussion between judges acceptable in order to select and agree upon the top awards in all categories. These trophies and awards are present-ed during their annual convention each January.
When it’s all said and done, your images receive the scores that the judges feel they deserve. Most of the time it’s pret-ty accurate but there are times that an image may score too low – or too high - because image competitions partly rely upon the feelings of individual human be-ings. In that way competitions are some-what subjective.
Judges try to leave competitions feeling that they have given each image the highest score and each maker the best benefit of the doubt possible while putting the image where it belongs for emotion-al, artistic and technical expertise. Don’t
listen to people who say that judges are partial, don’t know what they’re talking about, or don’t want to give anyone a high score – I have never met one like that and I’ve been in this business for many MANY years!
Sometimes a judge leaves a competition thinking of a particular image that he/she feels didn’t get its due. Perhaps he/she thinks he/she should have challenged a score but didn’t, was not eloquent enough to raise a score during a chal-lenge, or should have gone with the pack when he/she was the only hold out and maybe a bit stubborn, but that’s the ex-ception rather than the rule.
If you believe that your image was cheat-ed, try to corner a judge for a critique. Consider what input has merit, and what doesn’t in your opinion, revise and per-haps enter the image in a different com-petition.
I’ve seen images that scored in the mid 70’s at state win top awards at the nation-al level – and top award winners at state not even receiving a merit at regional.
SO, that’s my experience with image competitions! I love them because it gives image makers the opportunity to show off their finest work, see how their best work compares to that of their peers, have some fun creating new and experimental images that they don’t get to do every day, and learn from each other in order to achieve better quality of work as a body of artists moving our industry to new and higher levels of excellence.
I encourage you to enter! Just give it your full best because you’re going up against people who really love winning
Jane Connor-ziser, cont’d...
and work very hard to do it! Please don’t get discouraged if you’re not getting the rewards you want and need; get deter-mined to find out how you can do a bet-ter job next time.
Your continuing education and partici-pation will eventually reward you with the degrees and recognition you deserve as a professional Master Photographer, Li-centiate and/or Master Artist!
Good luck!
Jane Connor-ziser, cont’d...
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Here’s one from the Heart: are you a new photographer? If so, let's chat.
Being a new photographer can kind of suck. You’re lacking in knowledge. A lot of knowledge. And while you work on your craft and suffer the sometimes harsh crit-icism of your new peers, just how much knowledge you are short becomes pain-fully clear.
It’s a really tough spot to be in.
But some of you know darn good and well that you need to get camera-smart right quick. And you’re doing everything in your power to make that happen, no matter what. You’ve got your head down and you’re working hard.
I applaud you for that.
And this article is for you…
Not everyone has your best interests at heart. In fact, to some unscrupulous folks, you are pretty much an easy mark. If you’ve got a desire to learn and you’ve got a little cash in your pocket, well, the sad truth of it is, you will probably be lured into spending some of that before you’ve figured out what you’re buying.
Because you’re new. And because you don’t know any better.
It’s okay to not know any better. Every one of us was once exactly where you are right now. Our hearts were filled with pas-sion and our minds filled with doubts.
“Glitz and Glitter”Christine Walsh-Newton, M. Photog., Cr., CPP
And hopes. And dreams.
And maybe we were even a little naive.
But remember this: Not one of those peo-ple willing to part you with your money was born a photographer.
Not one of those people was an overnight sensation. And if you’ve been convinced that a series of templates, mentoring ses-sions or actions is going to suddenly bring you on par with the person peddling them – I’d like you to stop and think about that a little bit.
It’s easy to get caught up in the excite-ment of learning from someone who seems to be at the top of their game. But sometimes I think some important steps are being missed. So, I’d like you to stop, turn around, and go back to the begin-ning.
I want you to learn from the guy next door.
I want you to go to your local photogra-phy group and get to know the photogra-phers in your own back yard. Meet them, shake their hands and listen to their stories.
Find someone who has been in business longer than you’ve been alive; because there’s your real measure of success – someone who is doing it and has been doing it. For a very long time. They’re fairly likely to keep on doing it, wouldn’t you think?
Then find another someone just like this.
And then another.
These are the folks you want to learn from.
The folks that day in and day out are mak-ing photography support them.
Without a line of products, templates, vid-eos and packages of fluff. Without a large staff or a 99 city tour. These are the real photographers; the guy next door, with a wife and a couple of kids and in good years, a newer car.
They’re the ones who are gonna make sure you know the difference between broad and short light, how to use a light meter and how to shoot in manual mode. They’re the ones that are going to show you the traditional posing that will provide a solid basis for all your sessions.
They’re going to encourage you to seek out and learn a solid and complete skill set that will help you provide for yourself for the long term.
Sounds boring, right?
Well, the plain and simple truth of it is – it can be!
But, that’s not a bad thing.
I don’t say this to put down your choice or talk you away from photography as a career. I just want you to be realistic. It’s going to be a lot of hard work and most of that is going to be a little bit boring.
It’s a job.
A photography career is not the non-stop world tour vacation that some folks are selling it to be. Folks that would like you to spend your hard-earned dollars with them. Hard-earned dollars that are fund-ing their world-tour.
Not yours.
Some of these folks sell the glitz and glam-our of the role of photographer and fail to make it very clear just how many years they had to practice daily before they got as good as they currently are.
It’s not that they’re lying to you, or trying to pull one over on you. Instead, I think it’s kind of like having a baby. We cuddle and coo and put hair bows on them the size of Texas, all the while forgetting the 27 hours and 42 minutes of hard labor we endured to get there.
We must market what sells. Hard work and frustration and being broke doesn’t sell. It’s not sexy. It’s the reality of the first years of photography – it’s the reality of the first years of anyone who owns their own busi-ness. But no one really talks about that. It’s kind of boring.
Are you sensing a trend?
What fills the seats is the glitter. And right now, you’re being sold some glitter. All the fun and excitement; props and back-grounds, headbands and bows, actions and filters, Senior rep plans, baby plans and pricing plans. All glitter.
It’s like teaching you to make frosting be-fore you’ve learned how to make a cake. From scratch. Cake supports the frosting, it gives it something to grace. I’d like you to ditch the frosting for awhile and learn cake-making.
For awhile I’d like you to stick to your local groups; the guys next door. And as you begin to explore the range of educa-tional opportunities out there, I’d like you to ask them for their advice. And while
you’re doing that – stick to instruction that is sponsored by them or some other pro-fessional organization. Generally, these instructors are vetted and are teaching for an agreed-upon price that can be afford-ed by the students. They’re checked out beforehand by the sponsoring organiza-tion and there are specific topics that are to be covered.
In a way, it’s a bit of a built-in guarantee that you’ll be happy with your purchase. At the very least, you won’t be hung out to dry in the process.
So, slow down, take a deep breath and start over.
You are not alone. Sometimes you might feel that way; but we’re here for you.
Right next door.
Christine Walsh-Newton, cont’d...
“KEEP” (A Google APP!)Victoria Kelly
Back when I first started my photography studio I could pretty much keep up with ev-erything on my calendar in my head…I did carry a paper calendar with me for back-up but in those early days when I was building my brand and looking for clients I will admit there was more white space on it than I liked.
Fast forward through the years and now it’s virtually impossible for me to remem-ber what I had for breakfast, much less what appoint-ments I have on any given day.
I’m a Rotary club president. I edit/publish two magazines. I teach at two schools. And in between all those activities I run a working photography studio.
And now I’m switching between Apple gadgets and Android gadgets…really…what’s
Special Prices for Ann Monteith’s “Get Down To Business!” WorkshopMay 1 / 2 — Charlotte (FLASH2015 Pre-conference)
Special Prices for Ann Monteith’s “Get Down To Business!” WorkshopMay 1 / 2 — Charlotte (FLASH2015 Pre-conference)
As a SEPPA and/or PPA member, you are entitled to a deduction of $50 off the regular workshop price of $249.
Plus, if you take advantage of the $50 early registration credit, which ends on April 1, you will pay only $149!
Since Ann Monteith debuted this work-shop in 2013, she has received rave reviews from attendees . . . not only for her ability to demystify the mechanics of running a profitable business, but also for the marketing and management resources provided for each student to take home and use.
Designed to cut years off your learning curve, the workshop content tackles the key issues that form the framework for success in professional photography.
It covers six elements that photogra-phers must understand if they are to manage a successful business: Finances, Products, Workflow, Branding, Pricing, and Sales, with special attention paid to creating management systems that can stabilize business in good times and bad.
Among the key takeaways from this workshop are multiple ways to handle clients who expect to receive your digital files.
To register for this pre-con class, visit www.annsworkshop.com and use the code “SEPPA2015” for the $50 discount.
But wait, you ask. Don’t you use Notes and Reminders on your Apple gadgets to do just what Keep does?
Well…I used to. But I don’t anymore.
The great thing about Keep (and about all the Google apps) is that they really don’t care whether they’re playing in the Apple sandbox or the Android sandbox.
And that suits me just fine.
So…the next time sleep doesn’t come easily for you, check out the bundle of Google apps…I’m betting you’ll be pleas-antly surprised!
a gal to do?
In those wee hours of the morning when sleep eludes me (because I’m obsessing over the new day’s activities!) you can bet I’m either surfing Facebook or looking at apps in the Google play store.
And it was in the Google play store that I found “Keep”.
Now, Keep doesn’t claim to be all things to all people. It doesn’t do Julienne fries, change the oil in your car or make a fancy cake…but it DOES help you keep up with lists of things which you can color code to suit your fancy and set reminders for you.
If you’re one of those people who like to “see” what you’ve checked off your list du jour it will even do that, too.
Victoria Kelly, cont’d...
Sheraton Charlotte downtown
Shooting bays - Saturday, May 27pm until
You asked, we listened...come join us Saturday evening for the SweetLight party!
SweetLight Manufacturing will be stocking 4 fully loaded bays for you to use on Saturday evening...each bay will have a coach to guide you through with whatev-er you need assistance...AND there will be models aplenty!
So...just think...backdrops, light modifiers, models, props...everything you could POSSIBLY want to get your learn on at FLASH2015!
This event runs from 7pm until...
Pocket wizards will be provided.
