Judge complaint, model not looking at Camera

Well, it may just be a case of camera club judges and the old adage ‘Power corrupts, & Absolute power corrupts absolutely.’ BTW - Nice image!

We’ve been camera club members for a year and to be fair it has forced us to try new stuff and think differently.

As for competitions- we treat them as a bit of fun and enter them in a slightly mischievous frame of mind to disrupt and deviate from the norm!

As for the image from the OP, personally I’d agree with the judge but there’s no point worrying about it really. There’s no prizes involved !

You selected this image for entry into a competition against other images submitted by your fellow Club Members. In doing so you invited someone else to score or otherwise to order your picture in relation to those other pictures, and you expected them to talk about each image and tell the assembled group why they, as an individual, chose certain images to 'do well' over the other images. You knew that would be a personal opinion, and in all probability the judge said so at the beginning of their spiel.

You knew full well what was going on and yet you still decided to enter and you still chose this image to submit. I doubt you were forced to do either.

It sounds to me that the judge did precisely what was expected of them, but you didn't like the outcome.

We don't know what the other submitted images were like, so we can't judge whether, in our view, they were right. But our views don't really matter, because your Club didn't invite us to make those determinations.

However, for what it is worth and in my personal view, while your image is fairly soundly (but not superbly) taken it does not particularly jump out to me as a strong competition type image, nor in truth is it a strong contender on here for an FPI.

One reason for that is it does indeed give the impression that the 2 models are looking in different directions. But also it is, in my view, 'just' a fairly routine studio type portrayal of these two when everything was under your control. I can easily imagine there could have been other more enticing images submitted on the night that perhaps better showed the photographer's abilities and input.

Looking carefully at the RH model's eyes, I suspect she might actually have been looking roughly in your direction with her eyes, but her face doesn't look like it. Had you spotted that at the taking, you could have asked her to turn her head a bit towards you and maybe change her expression a bit which is a bit uninterested. That might have given the image a bit more interest, but that in it itself may well not have been enough to give you a chance of getting a significantly better result.

Don't blame the judge for doing what you asked them to do, but rather consider the comment dispassionately, and if you agree there may have been some worth in it, which in this case it would appear some of us tend to agree with them, then try to learn from it. If not simply ignore it and continue to enjoy your photography without letting it upset you.

Edited by Wavepower

The basic point to make is that, as far as can derived from you original post and normal behaviour, the judge gave you a comment based on his impression. It should be taken as critique but you seem to have interpreted it as a complaint. Try making the best of the remarks. Don't spend much time or effort on it. Get on and improve.

Camera club competitions - where so-called 'creatives' submit almost identical copies of other people's photos so that others can attempt to score art using prescriptive guidelines based on all the least important elements of the work. Everything about that gives me the ick. Competitions don't matter (in clubs, on here, or anywhere else), FPI don't matter, likes, loves and comments don't matter. Create work that makes you happy and that you are proud of. If it involves other people, try to make them happy too. Nothing else matters. There are no rules. 

A superb post on another forum many years ago gave some fantastic advice to photographers, and this piece seems relevant:

"Accept critique, but don't apply it blindly. Just because someone said it does not make it so. Critiques are opinions, nothing more. Consider the advice, consider the perspective of the advice giver, consider your style and what you want to convey in your work. Implement only what makes sense to implement. That doesn't not make you ungrateful, it makes you independent."

A picture of a duo I was told is stronger if the two are doing the same thing, looking in the same direction, for instance.

I'd extend it to if they are not, a reason needs to be apparent, of which many exist.

That was a camera club comment.

In Evelyn Waugh's amusing novel "Decline and Fall" a headmaster does not wish to upset any of the parents (who pay the fees) at Sports day, and declared that "all have done well, and all shall have prizes".

Unfocussed Mike said

ThePictureCompany said

I could never work out the thinking of club judges sometimes, that why I stopped offering pictures to be looked at.  Just like here and FPI's sometimes I think thats amazing and it gets rejected and sometimes I see images and think my dog could do better.  Its all a mystery.  I would say that the lady on the right does not look comfortable in her expression and so its hard to say if she is looking at the camera as would be liked by a judge so I can see why it was marked down.

Maybe I am terribly cynical but I don't think it's a mystery, at all. But I do think it has very little to do with photography, which might be why it's so hard to grasp in the context.

It's a lot more to do with authority, competition, convention and hierarchy.

All things that shouldn't affect your photography, unless of course they are the subject of your photography.

Camera club judges mark people down because someone has to be marked down and because they are the judge and they can do it. That's it. Someone has to lose. It's useless for the business of creating meaning or art.

Christ, I stay away for a couple of weeks and I've come back Che effing Guevara.

Edited by Unfocussed Mike

For what it's worth, 100% agree with you on this. I've seen friends quit photography entirely because of the "politics" of camera clubs. In my mind, photography is not about being competitive or having set rules. Do it because you are passionate about it, enjoy it ... find it therapeutic etc. Experiment, try different things .. "break" the rules. My advice to the OP is avoid camera clubs like the plague.

Mitch Morgan said

Camera club competitions - where so-called 'creatives' submit almost identical copies of other people's photos so that others can attempt to score art using prescriptive guidelines based on all the least important elements of the work. Everything about that gives me the ick. Competitions don't matter (in clubs, on here, or anywhere else), FPI don't matter, likes, loves and comments don't matter. Create work that makes you happy and that you are proud of. If it involves other people, try to make them happy too. Nothing else matters. There are no rules. 

A superb post on another forum many years ago gave some fantastic advice to photographers, and this piece seems relevant:

"Accept critique, but don't apply it blindly. Just because someone said it does not make it so. Critiques are opinions, nothing more. Consider the advice, consider the perspective of the advice giver, consider your style and what you want to convey in your work. Implement only what makes sense to implement. That doesn't not make you ungrateful, it makes you independent."

Well said, Mitch.

I think there’s probably social conditioning of what people think makes a good photograph, photographers often being even worse. Nobody’s even questioned, who are they? What’s there connection? They look awkward, what’s the story here? Most people are “oh it’s a photograph, one girls eye contact looks distant, it’s a bad photograph” then stop thinking. The danger is once you start to realise how strongly social conditioned we all are, numb to the subjects where making you’ve gone red pill, which is possibly contemporary photography, which hardly anybody likes anyway. 

Sensual Art said

Ah, yes, camera club judges. Reason #2 that I was only a member of one for one year.

(Reason #1 was the patronising and sanctimonious attitude from the chairman, who got voted back in year after year)

I know that feeling, I joined one, I lasted a couple of years but it was also over lockdown so I had nothing better to do. And I left for much the same issues, not the chairman being patronising, but some of the other members. 

FWIW The judge/s made a decision, I find it hard to argue against that opinion, Wavepower sums it up well.

I joined a Photographic Society many years ago, didn't last the year attending, as I found it a very broad mixture of talent, no talent, people full of their own importance, boring, unhelpful, a power struggle within the club structure, most living in the past. Others hell bent on submitting images only in the hope of a putty medal, a few who would join countless associations to adorn their names with worthless letters thinking it improves their skills....I have no time for that nonsense.

If the aim is to improve skills then an active studio camera club will provide a far better opportunity to improve ones craft, being constructively active shooting and not talking about it....a bit like the forums on here can sometimes be.

Might be an idea to put the image up for single image critique on here and see opinions of people who shoot people as opposed to birds on a stick, trains, and flowers think?

I think Camera Clubs get a very bad press, particularly from people who have no experience of them. I learnt (and am still learning) so much from them. How to understand exposure, depth of field. D&P my Black and White film, to start with. In the digital age, all the basics of editing. Visiting guest photographers whose work inspires and enriches my understanding. Yes there are competitions and these are sometimes subjective but sitting back once the judge has gone and having a chuckle and discussing photos we like even if the judge didn't. Of course there is the Annual Exhibition where the Public come and enjoy our work in print. Just be open minded about Camera Clubs and absorb the positives and let the negatives go over your head. PP is like a club and many of us dwell too long on the negatives and often forget the positives. If the Judge or Elf doesn't like an image, so be it. My latest image only got about 13/14 Likes but that meant those people enjoyed it as well as me.

A picture speaks a thousand words

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Gothic

Edited by Phil M

Camera club competitions will ruin your photography.

The models look bored. That’s what matters. Get them interacting.

”Not looking at the camera”:

philsphotos said

In such an image the subjects do need to be looking at the camera I think. Imagine a new season football team photo.......and all the players looking in different directions!

That sounds like the beginning of a series of work, to me. I joke about the Taylor Wessing Prize but some of the strongest entries have been sort of candid accidental tableaux.

I think this thread, which I hope I have not derailed too much, has reminded me that photography is very tethered to the idea of a technical, mechanical art, so too many practitioners and critics get caught up in the creation and reinforcement of new ways for photographers to be wrong, all the time. Eyes not sharp, not clear where the subject is looking, should have cloned out that scar, need a hair light, should have tried “loop” not “rembrandt”, should have placed on a rule of thirds line, not critically sharp, etc., etc. 

The precision of cameras make us think the job of photography is precision and clarity, or truth and the elimination of ambiguity. But those things are only the job when they are the job; it doesn’t need to bleed into all creative photography. And yet the hierarchy of camera club members — and indeed the national hierarchy of clubs, and the rotation of touring judges, and the idea of competition for prizes and shooting for competitions helps set in stone all these ways to be wrong, and establish all the micro-conventions by which photographers and their photos can be compared.

In the long run, what makes a good photograph, or a good photographer, is photographs that speak to the viewer and inspire them to feel or think things. That’s it.