We’ve debated long and hard over this in our club and after several years have reached these conclusions.

Most importantly, the Judge(es) should be experienced photographers. Only experience can determine that the action picture of a say a water skier was much more difficult to get than a generic Landscape. Only experienced photographers has the knowledge of all the different possibilities the photographer could have used and mark accordingly.

There should be one (at the very most three) Judges or you’ll have the ‘least offencive’ ‘chocolate box’ pictures bubbling to the top every time, any picture that tries to innovate, or is ‘different’ is doomed to failure. This is important as the ability to grow as a photographer could be stifled at birth. Committees lead to the mediocre rising to the top. The Camel is a horse designed by a commitee.

There is no ‘crib sheet’ for a good picture, even pictures which are out of focus (slightly), bad composition, incorrect exposure etc. etc. can be a good picture, even change history. Having 50% for technical merit would have reduced the total score for images such as this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hu%E1%BB%B3nh_C%C3%B4ng_%C3%9At

Doesn’t make much sense does it.

Most contentiously of all we allow any manipulation, the picture will stand or fall on it’s own merits. This allows pictures such as these

http://www.davehillphoto.com/

which actually owe more to the lighting than to Photoshop, or HDR etc to stand alonside ‘normal’ pictures.

Is it photography? No it’s more to do with Art using photography as a medium, just as artists would use paint as their medium. If you think about it all paintings are created using ‘manipulation’ from beginning to end, for our club it’s about the final image, how you got there is unimportant, it’s all about realizing your vision onto a piece of paper.

We’ve done this to allow our members to have the broadest canvas possible. The technical side is a narrow subject the artistic side is vast.

Chris

Photography Tips & Lighting : Architectural Photography Lighting

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