Reply To: County Fair rant- terrible judge!

[fstopper89]

@Nesgran, I don’t get “a kick” out of winning. I certainly don’t feel entitled to 1st place in everything I entered, as many times the person who placed ahead of me deserved it. Last year when we had a more competent judge, I did get a lot of firsts, and I felt I deserved those I got. I’m very impartial when it comes to viewing my photography and others’ photography and I can recognize what makes one photo better than another. A huge part is technical ability, but as you mentioned, it isn’t everything. I have also seen photographs with so much emotion that didn’t quite hit the mark technically, but they were so good otherwise you can overlook some of that stuff. One black and white portrait that took first place was a photo of a Native American man with a big white beard and wearing a beaded headband, gazing off into the distance. It was a close-up portrait, and spilled off the edges of the frame. It was composed very nicely and his wrinkles showed a lot of character. The overall photo was a bit underexposed, but it was so intriguing it was permissible. That one totally deserved first place. I got a 2nd in that category.

But what I’m talking here is photos that were REALLY uninteresting, showed severe laziness, and besides those, were poor technically. One of the “fall photo” entries had four photos of just fall trees in someone’s backyard. Nothing interesting to them at all, poorly composed, and poor exposure. Yet that one took first place on the basis of “these are just very nice photos.” Laziness also by seeing too many entries of flowers, shot straight-on, next to a building. One that took first place was totally out of focus as well. Many of the entrants had no variety in their entries, when in the past, they really stressed variety, creativity, and effort. Not “Oh crap, the fair is in a week, I guess I better knock out the last six entries I still haven’t done. Hey kids, stand by the front door and smile, so I can enter these for the portrait category!”

And yes, the rules state that if I make more than 50% of my yearly income from photography I can’t enter. I would call myself a part-time professional photographer. (Some people here hated when I used the term semi-pro! lol). I do portrait photography for hire on the side of my full-time day job (only in the warmer months, and about 1 shoot every two weeks if that). Anything I enter in the fair is all hobby stuff. I never have entered hired work in that. Portraits are of my friends/family. I do like entering because I know I have a talent in photography and it’s a place to display my work that otherwise people might never see. Stuff like still life, nature shots, etc.