Photography teachers who shouldn't teach

[LexiRose]

My Highschool photography teacher just had a digital photography contest for anybody who wanted to enter. She received over 200 submissions and out of all of those, first, second AND third place were ALL CLOSEUPS OF FLOWERS.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/68505053@N04/8575075786/in/photostream

I won nothing, and I’m not saying I would have if the teacher knew what she was doing, but there were some pretty impressive submissions by other people. It pains me to see that such an effortless, amateurish cliche won everything. A friend of mine  actually set up a photo-shoot with a dancer and took some really nice action shots. My own two submissions were a light-painting which took 3 days of staying up late, practicing and perfecting the composition, and a portrait that I went out at night in a blizzard to get. But, FLOWERS.

[dont.care]

sounds like your mad because you didn’t take photos of flowers o.O

[dont.care]

I like your photos tho, what I’ve looked at.. 🙂 Your teacher is probably an idiot who floated into his/her position or has went senile =o

 

But really sometimes, you can try too hard 😛

[Brownie]

I’m truly sorry. I’m not a huge fan of light painting but I find it infinitely more interesting than those flowers.

[fstopper89]

Those flower photos look very nice, though the bottom right seriously looks just like a wallpaper my phone allows me to download from the wallpaper app. Not saying the student downloaded it from the internet and claimed it to be theirs, but was there some kind of way for the teacher to verify the images submitted were the students’ actual work? Just a point to think about.

It also sounds like she should have had categories. It’s almost impossible to pick the best three images out of 200 submissions when some are flowers, some are portraits, some are street photography, etc.

I know I mentioned this somewhere here before but I enter photography in the county fair every summer. It’s mostly for fun, friendly competition, but I also win money for every first place. Last year, after paying for my photo printing AND my $30 fair season pass, I came out with a profit of $30 after I got my premium check! So it is worth it. Anyways, a few years ago they had two judges. One was a supposed retired newspaper photographer, and the other was just some nice guy who didn’t know much about photography. I was practically pulling my hair out watching them deliberate and talk about why one entry was better than another, when a lot of the times the photo they picked was awful (speaking on technical terms) and they threw aside some really good images (some of mine, some of others). They awarded this terrible photo of a cow 1st place in a few categories (Large color image, large black and white image, 4 images of animals, 4 farm photos, 4 unrelated photos) and the image was terrible. It was shot straight-on, was out-of-focus, the green grass was completely over-saturated, and the cow’s face was in shadow. Their basis for giving that photo the awards? “It’s just a really neat photo.” It was a joke!

[LexiRose]

I honestly don’t have issue with the fact that I didn’t win anything, I didn’t expect to, and I don’t even have a lot of drive to enter other contests, because I don’t  feel all that confident about my work.

What bothers me here is that this person is teaching hundreds of student’s. It’s their responsibility to know the craft and recognize when students have worked hard and been innovative. All of the other submissions were also placed on our school website, and there were so many really nice photos. Even a lot of mediocre hdr and spot-colored ones that at least required some creativity. At least for most of the photos, the photographer had to venture further than their own front lawn.

This teacher is raising a new army of fauxtographers who think that pretty flowers are the pinnacle of photography.

[nairbynairb]

If your teacher made that image you posted, I wouldn’t take not-winning to heart… Just sayin’

 

[LexiRose]

I know, nairbynairb, people were just commenting about the fact that I didn’t win, and I wan’t to make it clear that that isn’t what I was bothered by or wanted to discuss. This was about teachers who don’t know anything about the business.

[cameraclicker]

I had a look at your Flickr page.  Before I get started, I want to mention I would crop the green traffic light off the right side of DSC_0101 (3), because I find it distracting.  I would probably also clone out the horizontal bar just to the left of that light, just leaving the green glow of the light but not the light itself.

Perhaps your teacher has a thing for flowers?  Or for close-up photos?  I like both of those, myself.  I think if I were judge and those were the three photos, I would rotate them around clockwise one position as I like the tulips best of those three, followed by the water drop.  I have seen many competitions where I wondered why the winner was selected, and have probably judged many where someone else was wondering why the winner was selected.  My usual method is to weed out the obviously defective images, which sometimes only leaves a few photos to select from and in other contests it is almost no help at all.  Then comes a great gnashing of teeth as I try to decide which photos should be on a progressively shorter list until I have determined win, place, show and so on.  As browneyedgirl89 said, an open competition with no theme or mandatory elements is just asking for judging pain.  In the final analysis, winning a contest is the result of submitting the image that resonates most with the judge or judges and sometimes an image with obvious flaws will have those flaws overlooked because the subject or mood is so striking.

[Brownie]

Pardon my frankness, but if you seriously believe that these photographs of oversaturated flowers are compelling and should be placing in any judging, especially a judging by an educator in the medium, then I cannot take your opinion about photography or work seriously.

Just how it is.

[cameraclicker]

LOL!  Not what I said!

Let me try again…  “Perhaps your teacher has a thing for flowers?  Or for close-up photos?  I like both of those, myself.”  I happen to like shooting both flowers and macro.

” I think if I were judge and those were the three photos, I would rotate them around clockwise one position as I like the tulips best of those three, followed by the water drop.”  I’m not sure how I could be clearer unless I said, if those were the only three photos, or the three best photos, I would rank them differently.

Better?  You are still free to not take me seriously.  This is, after all, the Internet.  And, I’m only expressing one guy’s opinion.  Oh, and it’s hard to determine if the selection was at all reasonable since we don’t have any idea if there was a criteria, or instruction, and haven’t seen the other entries.

[Brownie]

Haha, fair enough, but I wasn’t addressing you with that comment, it just needed to be said.

[cameraclicker]

NP. ;o)  I was the last one up and apparently I’m over caffeinated.

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