EP168 Inside The Print Room - What It's Like To Be A Judge The Mastering Portrait Photography podcast

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EP168 Inside The Print Room - What It's Like To Be A Judge

1d ago 50:37

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Husky voice, Friday night whiskey, and a mountain of cheese from the book launch. In this episode I lift the lid on what really happens inside a print judging room. The rotation of five from a pool of seven. Silent scoring so no one nudges anyone else. How a challenge works, what the chair actually does, and why we start with impact, dive through craft, then finish on impact again to see what survives. Layout over composition, light as the whole game, and a final re-rank that flattens time drift so the right image actually wins.

If you enjoy a peek behind the curtain, you will like this one. You can grab a signed copy of the new Mastering Portrait Photography at masteringportraitphotography.com and yes, I will scribble in it. If you already have the book, a quick Amazon review helps more than you know. Fancy sharpening your craft in person? Check the workshops page for new dates and come play with light at the studio.
The book: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/resource/signed-copy-mastering-portrait-photography-new-edition/

Workshops: https://masteringportraitphotography.com/workshops-and-mentoring/

Transcript

[00:00:00]

Hey, one and all. How are you doing? Now? I'll be honest, I still have the remnants of a cold, and if you can hear that in my voice, I do apologize, I suppose you could call it slightly bluesy, but you can definitely hear that I'm ever so slightly husky. It's Friday night, it's eight 30, and I was, I've been waiting a week to record this podcast, hoping my voice would clear it hasn't, and so I've taken the opportunity having a glass of whiskey and just cracking on.

So if you like the sound of a slightly bluesy voice, that's great. If you don't, I'm really sorry, but whichever, which way I'm Paul. And this is the Mastering Portrait Photography podcast.

So it's been a busy month or two. You can always tell when it's busy [00:01:00] 'cause the podcasts. Get, don't really get delivered in quite the pace I would like. However, it really has been a busy couple of weeks the past few. Let me, I'm gonna draw your attention to it. The past couple of weeks, we've, there's a ton of stuff going on around us for a moment.

I was up in Preston. I've been up in Preston twice over the past couple of weeks. The first one was working as a qualifications judge for the BIPP, the British Institute Professional photographers. Um. Which I love judging. I love judging. It's exhausting, but I love it. And that was qualifications, panels.

Then last week was the launch. Of the updated edition of Mastering Portrait Photography, the book, which is where it all started, where Sarah Plata and I published this book that seems to have been incredibly popular. 50,000 copies translated from English into four other languages. Chinese, Korean, German.

And Italian, do not ask me, do not ask me the logic on why the book is in those [00:02:00] particular languages. To be fair, we only found out about the Chinese and Korean when we were trying to get some marketing material together to talk about the new book Nobody had told us. I'm not even sure the publisher knew, to be honest.

Uh, but we have found copies. We have a Chinese copy here in the studio. I'm still trying to get a Korean version. So if you are listening to this. Podcast in Korea. Please tell me how to get hold of a version in Korean because we'd love to complete the set. There's, in fact, there's two Italian versions. We knew about that. There's a German version we knew about that hardback version. It's great. It's really beautiful. Very I, like I, I don't live in Germany and I don't like to stereotyping entire nation, but the quality of the book is incredible. It's absolutely rock solid, properly engineered. Love it.

We have a Chinese version here but the Korean version still alludes us. However, this week the new version, mastering portrait photography is out. And as you know, I, Sarah interviewed me for the podcast last week to talk about it. Well, it's out. We've had our launch party, uh, we invited everybody who [00:03:00] has featured in the book who, everybody, every picture in the book that we asked the person in it to come to the studio for a soiree.

And it was brilliant. I've never seen so much cheese in all my life, and by I don't mean my speech, I mean actual cheese. We had a pile of it, still eating it. So it's been a week and I'm still eating the cheese. I dunno quite how, well, quite by how much we vacated, but probably by several kilos. Which I'm enjoying thoroughly.

I've put on so much weight this week, it's unreal, but I'm enjoying the cheese. And then on Sunday we had an open day where we had set the studio out with some pictures from the book and some notes of the different people. Who featured and what I might do, actually, I'd, I wonder if I can do a visual podcast.

I might do a visual podcast where I talk about those images, at some point on the website, on masteringportraitportraitphotography.com. I will do the story and the BTS and the production of every single image that's in the book, but it's gonna take me some [00:04:00] time. There's nearly 200 images in there.

Um, and every one of them, bar one is a new image or is, is. It is, it is a new image in the book, and it has been taken in the 10 years or the decades subsequent to the first book, all bar one. Feel free to email me. Email me the image you think it might be. You'll probably guess it, but it's it's definitely in there.

Um, and so it's been really busy. And then at the beginning of this week, I spent two days up in Preston again, judging again, but this time it was for the British Institute of Professional Photographers print Masters competition. Ah, what, what a joy. Six other judges and me, a chair of judges. Print handlers, the organizers.

Ah, I mean, I've seen so many incredible images over those 48 hours, and in this podcast I want to talk a bit about how we do it, why we do it, what it feels like to do it, [00:05:00] because I'm not sure everybody understands that it's it, it's not stressful, but we do as judges, feel the pressure. We know that we are representing, on the one hand, the association as the arbiters of the quality of the curators of these competitions, but also we feel the pressure of the authors because we are there too.

We also enter competitions and we really, really hope the judges pay attention, really investigate and interrogate the images that we've entered. And when, when you enter competitions, that heightens the pressure to do a good job for the authors who you are judging. So in this podcast, I'm gonna talk through some of the aspects of that.

Forgive me if it sounds like I'm answering questions. It's because I wrote myself some questions. I wrote some [00:06:00] questions down to, how I structures the podcast usually, uh, the podcast rambles along, but this one I actually set out with a structure to it, so forgive me if it sounds like I'm answering questions.

It's 'cause I'm answering my own questions. What does it feel like? How do you do it? Et cetera, et cetera. Anyway, I hope it's useful. Enjoy. And it gives you an insight into what it's like to be a competition judge.

Okay. As you walk into the judging room. For me at least, it's mostly a sense of excitement. There's a degree of apprehension. There's a degree of tension, but mostly there's an adrenaline rush. Knowing that we're about to sit and view, assess, score these incredible images from photographers all over the world, and let's remember that every photographer when they enter a print competition, which is what I'm talking about primarily here.

Every photographer [00:07:00] believes that print that category that year, could win. Nobody enters an image thinking that it doesn't stand a chance. Now you might do that modest thing of, I don't know, you know? Oh no, I don't. I I just chance my arm. No one enters a print they don't think has a chance of doing well.

That just doesn't happen. It's too expensive. It takes too much time. And as judges. We are acutely aware of that. So when you walk into the room, lots of things are going in your on, in your heads. Primarily, you know, you are there to do a job. You are there to perform a task. You are going to put your analytical head on and assess a few hundred images over the next 48 hours.

But as you walk in, there's a whole series of things. You, you are gonna assess the room. You see that your fellow judges, you're gonna see the print handlers. You're going to see the chair, you're gonna see the people [00:08:00] from whichever association it is who are organizing it, who or who have organized it.

You'll see stacks of prints ready to be assessed. There's a whole series of things that happen. A lot of hugging. It's really lovely. This year the panel of judges, uh, had some people in it I haven't seen for quite a few years, and it was beyond lovely to see them. So there's all of that, but you, there's this underlying tension you are about to do.

One of the things you love doing more than anything else in as part of your job. So there's the excitement of it and the joy of it, but there's always this gentle underlying tone of gravitas of just how serious it is. What we are doing. So there will be plenty of laughter, plenty of joy, but you never really take your eye off the task in hand.

And that's how it feels as you go to take your seats on the judging [00:09:00] panel.

So the most important thing, I think, anyway, and I was chair of qualifications and awards for the BIPP for a number of years, is that the whole room, everybody there is acting as a team. If you are not gonna pull as a team, it doesn't work. So there has to be safety, there has to be structure.

There has to be a process and all of these things come together to provide a framework in which you assess and create the necessary scores and results for the association, for the photographers, for the contestants. So you take your seats, and typically in a room, there are gonna be five judges at any one time assessing an image.

It's typically five. I've seen it done other ways, but a panel of judges is typically five. The reason we have five is at no point do all of the judges agree. [00:10:00] We'll go through this later in more detail, but the idea is that you have enough judges that you can have contention, you can have. Disagreements, but as a panel of judges, you'll come up with a score.

So you'll have five judges sitting assessing an image at any one time. To the side of the room, there'll be two more judges typically. Usually we have a pool of seven, five judges working, two judges sitting out every 10 prints or 10 minutes or whatever the chair decides. They'll we'll rotate along one, so we'll all move along one seat and one of the spare judges will come in and sit on the end and one of the existing judges will step off.

And we do that all day, just rotating along so that everybody judges, broadly speaking, the same number of images. Now, of course there is a degree of specialism in the room. If a panel has been well selected, there'll be specialists in each of the categories, but you can't have, let's say there's 15 categories.

You [00:11:00] can't have five specialist judges per category. That's simply impractical. Um, you know, having, what's that, 75 judges in a room, just so that you can get through the 15 categories is. A logistics task, a cost. Even just having a room that big, full of judges doesn't work. So every judge is expected to be reasonably multi-talented, even if you don't shoot, for instance, landscapes.

You have to have a working knowledge of what's required of a great landscape. Because our job as a panel isn't that each of us will spot all of the same characteristics in an image, all of the same defects, all of the same qualities. Each judge has been picked to bring their own. Sort of viewpoint, if you like, to the image.

Some judges are super technical, some judges, it's all about the atmosphere. Some judges, it's all about the printing and there's every bit of image production is [00:12:00] covered by each of the individual specialisms of the judges. And so while there is a degree of specialism, there will be a landscape.

Specialist in the room or someone who works in landscape, there will be plenty of portrait photographers, wedding photographers, commercial photographers. The idea is from those seven, we can cover all of those bases. So we have seven judges all at fellowship level, all highly skilled, all experienced.

And then there's the chair. Now the chair's role is not to affect the actual score. The chair's role is to make sure the judges have considered everything that they should be considering. That's the Chair's job, is to make sure the judges stay fresh, keep an eye on the scores, keep an eye on the throughput.

Make sure that every image and every author are given a. The time and consideration that they are due. What do I mean by that? Well, I just mean the photographers spent a lot of time and effort and [00:13:00] finance putting this print in front of us, and so it's really important that we as judges give it due consideration.

The chair, that's their role is to make sure that's what really happens. So the process is pretty simple, really. We will take our seats as a panel of judges and when we are settled. The chair will ask for the print, one of the print handlers. There's normally a couple of print handlers in the room, one to put the image on, one to take the image off.

The print handler will take the first image or the next image off the pile and place it in front of us on the light box. They will then check the print to make sure there's no visible or obvious dust marks, um, or anything, and give with an air blower or with the back of a a handling glove, or very gently take any dust spots away.

They will then step back. Now, the way the judges are set, there are five seats in a gentle arc, usually around the light [00:14:00] box. The outer two judges, judges one and five will step into the light box and examine or interrogate the print carefully. They will take as much time as they need to ascertain what they believe the score for that image should be.

They will then take their seats. The next two judges in, so let's say Judge two and four, they will step in to interrogate the print and do exactly the same thing. When they're ready, they'll step back and sit down. And then the middle judge, the final judge in seat three, they will step up and interrogate the print.

And the reason we do it that way is that everybody gets to see the print thoroughly. Everybody gets to spend enough time. Examining the print. And at that point, when we all sit down, we all enter our scores onto whatever the system is we're using either using iPads or keypads. There's all sorts of ways of doing it, but what's really important is we do all of this in total silence and we don't really do it because we need to be able to [00:15:00] concentrate.

Though that has happened, sort of distracting noises can play havoc. Um, we really do it so that we are not influencing any other judge. So there's no, oh, this is rubbish, or, oh, this is amazing. Or any of this stuff, because the idea is that each judge will come to their own independent score. We enter them, and then there's a process as to what happens next.

So that's the process. If at some point a single judge when the image appears, says, I can't judge this for whatever reason, usually it's because they've seen the image before. I mean, there's one this week where I hadn't directly influenced the image. But the author had shown me how they'd done it, so they'd stepped me through the Photoshopping, the construction, the shooting, everything about the image.

I knew the image really well, and so when the image appeared on the light box, I knew while I could judge it, it wasn't fair to the author or to the other [00:16:00] competitors that I should. So I raised my hand, checked in with the chair, chair, asked me what I wanted. I said, I need to step off this. I'm too familiar with the work for me to give this a cold read, an objective read.

So I if, if possible, if there's another judge, could they just step in and score this one image for me? And that means it's fair for all of the contestants. So that's that bit of process when we come to our score. Let's assume the score's fine. Let's assume, I dunno, it gets an 82, which is usually a merit or a bronze, whatever the system is.

The chair will log that, she'll say that image scored 82, which is the average of all five of us. She'll then check in with the scores and the panel of judges. He or she rather, uh, they, so they will look at us and go, are you all happy with that result? That's really important. Are you all happy? Would that result?

Because that's the opportunity as judges for one of us, if we're not comfortable that the image is scored where we think it probably should. And [00:17:00] remember with five of you, if the score isn't what you think, you could be the one who's not got your eye in or you haven't spotted something, it might well be you, but it's your job as a judge to make sure if there's any doubt in your mind about the scoring of an image that.

You ask for it to be assessed again, for there to be discussion for the team to do its job because it might be that the other members of the panel haven't seen something that you have or you haven't seen something that they have, that both of those can be true. So it's really important that you have a process and you have a strict process.

And this is how it works. So the chair will say you are happy. One of the judges may say. No, I'm not happy or may say I would like to challenge that or may simply say, I think this warrants a discussion. I'm gonna start it off. And then there's a process for doing that. [00:18:00] So the judge who raises the challenge will start the dialogue and they'll start in whichever direction it is that they think the scoring is not quite right.

They will start the dialogue that way. So let's say the score, the judge who's raising a challenge says the score feels a little low. What happens then is raise a challenge and that judge will discuss the image or talk to the image in a way that is positive and trying to raise the score. And they're gonna do that by drawing attention to the qualities that they feel the image has, that maybe they're worried the other judges haven't seen when they're done, the next judge depends, depending on the chair and how you do it.

The next judge will take their turn and he goes all the way around with every judge having their say. And then it comes back to the originating judge who has the right of a rebuttal, which simply means to answer back. So depending on how the [00:19:00] dialogue has gone it may be that you say thank you to all of the judges.

I'm glad you saw my point. It would be great if we could give this the score that I think this deserves. Similarly, you occasionally, and I did do one of these where I raised a challenge, um, where I felt an image hadn't scored, or the judges hadn't seen something that maybe I had seen in the image, and then very quickly realized that four judges had seen a defect that I hadn't.

And so my challenge, it was not, it's never a waste of a challenge. It's never ever a waste because it's really important that every image is given the consideration it deserves. But at the end of the challenge that I raised, the scoring stayed exactly the same. I stayed, I said thank you to all of the judges for showing me some stuff that I hadn't noticed.

And then we moved on. More often than not, the scores move as the judges say, oh, do you know what, you're right, there is something in this. Or, no, you're right. We've overinflated this because we saw things, but we missed these technical defects. It's those kinds of conversations. So that's a, a chair, that's a, a judge's [00:20:00] challenge.

Yeah, this process also kicks in if there's a very wide score difference between the judge's scores, same process, but this time there's no rebuttal. Every judge simply gives their view starting with the highest judge and then working anywhere on the panel. Um, and then there's a rare one, which does happen which is a chair's challenge, and the chair has the right in, at least in the competitions that I judge, the chair has the right to say to the panel of judges.

Could you just give this another consideration? I think there might be things you've missed or that feels like you're getting a little bit steady in your scoring. 'cause they, the chair of course, has got a log of all the scores and can see whether, you know, you're settling into like a 78, 79 or one judge is constantly outta kilter.

The chair can see everything and so your job as the chair is to just, okay guys, listen, I think this image that you've just assessed. Possibly there's some things one way or the [00:21:00] other that you might need to take into consideration. It doesn't feel like you have. I'd like you to discuss this image and then just do a rescore.

So those are the, those are the mechanisms. So in the room you've got five judges plus two judges who are there ready to step in when required either on the rotation or when someone recuses themself and steps out. Usually two print handlers and then usually there's at least one person or maybe more from the association, just doing things like making sure things are outta their boxes, that the scores are recorded on the back of the prints, they go back into boxes, there's no damage because these prints are worth quite a lot of money. And so, there's usually quite a few people in the room, but it's all done in silence and it's all done to this beautiful process of making sure it's organized, it's clear it's transparent, and we're working as one team to assess each image and give it the score that it deserves.

so when the print arrives on the box. It has impact. Now, whether you like it or not, [00:22:00] whether you understand it or not, whether you can define it or not, the print has an impact.

You're gonna see it, you're gonna react to it. How do you react to it? Is it visceral? Does your heart rate climb? Do you. Do you explore it? Do you want to explore it? Does it tell a clear story? And now is when you are judging a competition, typically the association or the organization who are running the competition will have a clear set of criteria.

I mean, broadly speaking, things like lighting, posing layout or composition storytelling. Graphic design, print quality, if it's a print competition. These are the kinds of things that, um, we look for. And they're listed out in the competition guides that the entrant, the author will have known those when they submitted their print.

And the judges know them when we're assessing them, so they're kind of coherent. Whatever it is that the, the entrance were told, that's what we're judging [00:23:00] to the most important. Is the emotional connection or the impact? It's typically called visual impact or just impact. What's really important about that is that it's very obvious, I think, to break images down into these constructed elements like complimentary colors or tonal range or centers of interest, but they don't really do anything except create.

Your emotional reaction to the picture. Now, we do use language around these to assess the image, but what we're actually looking for is emotional impact. Pictures tell stories. Stories invoke emotions. It's the emotions we're really looking for. But the trick when you are judging is you start with the initial impact.

Then you go in and you in real tiny detail, look at the image. Explore it, interrogate it, [00:24:00] enjoy it, maybe don't enjoy it. And you look at it in all of the different categories or different areas, criteria that you are, that the judges that the organization have set out. And then really, although it never gets listed twice, it should do, impact should also be listed as the last thing you look at as well.

Because here's the process. You look at the image. There's an impact. You then in detail investigate, interrogate, enjoy the image. And then at the very end you ask yourself, what impact does it still have? And that's really important because the difference between those two gives you an idea of how much or how well the image is scoring in all of the other areas.

If an image has massive impact when you, let's put 'em on the light box, and then you explore it and you [00:25:00] enjoy it, and you look at it under the light, and then at the end of it you're still feeling the same thing you did when it came on the light box, that's a pretty good indicator that all the criteria were met.

If on the other hand, as you've explored the image, you've realized. There are errors in the production, or you can see Photoshopping problems or blown highlights or blocked blacks, or things are blurred where they should be sharp or you name it. It's these kinds of things. You know, the printing has got banding in the sky, which is a defect.

You see dust spots from a camera sensor. These gradually whittle away your impact score because you go back to the end and you ask, what impact does the image now have? And I've heard judges use terms like at the end of the process, I thought that was gonna be amazing when it first arrived on the light box.

I just loved the look of it from a distance, but when I stepped in, there were just too many things that [00:26:00] weren't quite right. And at the end of it, I just felt some would, sometimes I've heard the word disappointed you. So that's certainly how I feel. When an image has this beautiful impact and the hair stand up on the back of your neck and you just think, I cannot wait to step in and explore this image in detail.

'cause I tell you one thing, most authors don't own a light box. When you see a print on a beautiful light box, the, there's something about the quality. The way the print ESS is you actually get to see what a print should look like. So when you step in, you are really excited to see it. And if at the end of that process you're slightly disappointed because you found defects in the printing or problems with the focusing or Photoshop or whatever it is.

You really are genuinely disappointed. So that's how you approach it. You approach it from this standpoint of a very emotional, a very emotional connection with the image to start with, and then you break [00:27:00] it down into its elements, whatever those elements are for the competition. And then at the end, you ask yourself really, does it still have the impact?

I thought it would because if it does, well, in that case, it's done really, really well.

one of the things that's really interesting about judging images is we, we draw out, we write out all of these criteria and.

Every image has them really. I mean, well, I say that of course every image doesn't have them. If you are, if you're thinking about landscape or a picture of a shampoo bottle, it doesn't have posing, for instance, if that's one of your criteria. But typically there's a standard set of criteria and every image has them layout, color uh, photographic technique, et cetera.

So if we look at let's say composition, let's talk about composition. Personally, I like to use the term layout rather than composition because it [00:28:00] feels a little bit more like a verb. You lay the image out, you have all of the bits, you lay them out. I like that because when we are teaching photography when we say to someone, right, what are all of the bits that you have in front of you?

How are you gonna lay them out? It feels a lot more, to me, at least more logical than saying, how are you gonna compose the image? Because it allows. I think it allows the photographer to think in terms of each individual component rather than just the whole frame. So we are looking for how the image is constructed.

Remember that every photographer really should think about an image. As telling a story, what's the story that you want somebody else? Somebody that you've never met. In this case a judge, but it could be a client or it could just be somebody where your work is being exhibited on a wall. What do you want them to look at?

What do you want them to see? Where do you want that eye to go? And there are lots of tricks to [00:29:00] this, and one of them is layout or composition. So we've got through the initial impact, boom. And the excitement. And then you start to think, is the image balanced? I like to think of an image having a center of gravity.

Some photographers will use center of interest, which is a slightly different thing, but I think an image has a center of gravity. The component parts of the image create balance. So you can have things right down in the edges of the frame, but you need something to balance it like a seesaw. You can't just.

Throw in, throw parts of the puzzle around the frame. So you are looking for where do they land? And of course, as photographers, we talk about thirds, golden ratios, golden spirals, all of these terms. But what we are really looking for is does the image have a natural flow? Does it feel like everything's where it should be?

Does your eye go to the bit that the author probably wanted you to look at? Have they been effective in their [00:30:00] storytelling? And by storytelling, I don't necessarily mean storytelling as in photojournalism or narrative rich photography. What I mean is what did they want you to see, and then did you go and see it?

Separation? Is the background blurred? And let's say the, the subject is sharp. That's a typical device for making sure you look at the subject. Is the color of the background muted in a way that draws your attention? Again to whatever it is in the foreground. So layouts one of those tools. So we work our way around it and try and figure out does the positioning of all of the elements of the image does their positioning add or distract from the story?

We think that author was trying to tell. Let's remember that it's not the judge's job to understand the story. It's the author's job to tell the story in a way that the judges can get it. Too often, you know, when I, when I've judged [00:31:00] a competition, someone will come and find me afterwards and say, did you understand what that was about?

I was trying to say this, and it's like, well, I didn't see that, but that's not my fault. You know, it's, it's down to you to lead me pictorially to. Whatever it is you're trying to show. Same with all judges, all viewers, clients. It doesn't really matter. It's the author's job, not the judges. So at the end of that, you then move on to whatever's the next criteria.

So you know, you assess these things bit by bit, and by the way, every judge will do it in a slightly different order. There'll be written down in an order. But each judge would approach it in a different manner. For me, typically it's about emotional connection more than anything else, it's about the emotion.

I love that genuine, authentic connection of a person in the image. To me, the viewer. I will always go there if, if it's a portrait or a wedding or fashion image, if there's a person in it or a dog, I suppose, [00:32:00] then I will look for that authenticity, that, that visceral, it feels like they're looking at me or I'm having a dialogue with them.

That's my particular hot button, but every judge has their room and that's how you approach it.

So when it comes to a photograph in the end, you don't really have anything other than light when you think about it, right?

That's, you pick up a camera, it's got a sensor, it's got film, it's got a lens on the front, and a shutter stopping light coming, or it goes through the lens, but the, the shutter stops it hitting a sensor. And at some point you commit light to be recorded. And it's the light that describes the image.

There's nothing else. It's not something you can touch or hear, it's just light. And of course light is everything. I think, I think the term pho photography or photograph is a mix of a couple of words, and it's a relatively recent idea. I think [00:33:00] it was Victorian and it's, isn't it light and art photographic or photograph, um.

So that's what it is. It's capturing light and creating a reaction from it. So the quality of light is possibly the most important thing. There is too much of it, and you're gonna have blown highlights, nasty white patches on your prints, too little of it. You're gonna have no detail in the shadows and a lot of noise or grain, whether it's film or whether it's off your sensor.

And then there's the shape of the light. The color of the light, and it doesn't really matter whether it's portrait, wedding, landscape, product, avant garde, it's light that defines things. It's light that can break an image. So with portraiture, for instance,

we tend to talk about. Sculpting or dimensionality of light. We tend to talk about the shape of the subject. We talk about flattering light. We talk about hard and soft light, and all of these things [00:34:00] mean something. This isn't the podcast to talk about those in detail, but that's what we're looking for.

We are looking for has the light created a sense of shape, a sense of wonder, a sense of narrative. Does the lighting draw your eye towards the subject? And when you get to the subject, is it clear that the lighting is effective and by effective, usually as a portrait photographer anyway. I mean flattering.

But you might be doing something with light that's counterintuitive, that's making the subject not flattered. That's maybe it's for a thriller style thing, or maybe it's dark and moody. Harsh, as long as in tune with the story as we are seeing it, then the lighting is assessed in that vein. So we've seen some incredible beauty shots over the past couple of days where the lighting sculpted the face.

It had damaged ality, but it was soft. There were no hard shadows, there were no [00:35:00] blown highlights. The skin, it was clear that the texture of the skin, the light, it caught the texture. So we knew exactly what that would be. It had. Captured the shape. So the way the gens or shadows ripple around a body or a face tell you its shape.

They haven't destroyed the shape. It's it's catch shape, but it hasn't unnecessarily sculpted scars or birthmarks or spots, you know? And that's how lighting works. So you look for this quality, you look for control, you look for the author, knowing what they're doing. With landscapes, typically it's, it is very rare, in my opinion, for a landscape.

To get a good score if it isn't shot at one end of the day or the other. Why? Well, typically, at those points of the day, the light from the sun is almost horizontal. It rakes across the frame, and you get a certain quality to the way the shadows are thrown. The way the [00:36:00] light, sculpts hills, buildings, clouds, leaves, trees, the way it skips off water, whether it's at the beginning of the day or the end of the day.

It's quite unusual though we do see them for an amazing photograph of escape to be taken at midday. But you can see how it could be if you have the sun directly overhead, because that has a quality all of its own. And you know, if when an author has gone to the effort of being in the right place to shoot vertical shadows with a direct overhead son, well maybe that's so deliberate that the, the judges will completely appreciate that and understand the story.

So it's looking for these things and working out. Has the lighting been effective in telling the story? We think the author was trying to tell? Lighting is at the heart of it.

So when we've been through every criteria, whatever they are, lighting, composition, color, narrative, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, [00:37:00] we've assessed every image, hundreds of them. We've had challenges, we've had conversations. We have a big pile of prints that have made it over the line. To whatever is your particular association scoring, whether it's merit or bronze or whatever.

The puzzle isn't quite complete at that stage because there is of course, a slight problem and that problem is time. So if you imagine judging a section of images might take a couple of hours to do 70 prints, 60, 70 prints might take longer than that. In fact, it might take the best part of an afternoon.

During that time. There's every chance the scores will wander. And the most obvious time is if a category spans something like a lunch break. We try to make sure categories don't do that. We try to complete categories before going for a break. We always try to be continuous, but [00:38:00] you've still got fatigue.

You've got the judges rotating. So all of these things are going on. It sometimes it depends what images come up in what order could conceivably affect the scoring. For instance there's an image that came up this year where I think probably I was the judge that felt the strongest about it. There was something about this particular image that needed talking about, and so when it came up and it was scores that I raised a challenge and my heart rate, the minute the print hit the stand, my heart rate climbed through the roof.

It was. Something about it that just connected with me. And then when I explored the image on the lights, on the light box, to me, there was very little that was technically holding it back. There were a couple of bits, but nothing that I felt warranted a lower score. And so I raised a [00:39:00] challenge. I said my point, I went through it in detail.

I asked the other judges to consider it. From my viewpoint, they gave their views as to why they hadn't. But each of them understood where I was coming from and unlike the challenge I talked about earlier where no one changed their mind on this one, they did on this one. They also saw things that I saw when we went through it.

But at the end of the process, the image was got a higher score, which is great, but. I didn't feel that I could judge the next image fairly because whatever came in, my heart rate was still battering along after seeing this one particular image. And that happens sometimes. It's not common, but I felt I needed to step off the panel before the next image came up.

Which I did in work, working with the chair and the team. I stepped off for a couple of prints before stepping back on [00:40:00] just to let my eye settle and let myself get back into the right zone. But during the day, the zone changes. The way you change your perception of the images, as the images come through is so imperceptible, imperceivable, imperceptible.

One of those two words is so tiny that you don't notice if there's a slight drift. And so there's every opportunity for an image to score a couple of points lower or a couple of points higher than it possibly could have done. If it had been seen at another point in the day. Maybe it had been, maybe if the image was seen after a series of not so strong images, maybe it would get a higher score.

Or of course, the other way round. Maybe after seeing a series of really, really powerful, impactful images that came up, maybe it scored be slightly diminished. Both of those can be true. And so it's really important that we redress that any possible imbalance and every competition I've ever done has a final round.

And the [00:41:00] way this is done is that we take the highest scoring images, top five, top 10, depending on the competition, and we line them up. And all of the judges now, not just the judges who are the five on the panel, all seven judges. Get an opportunity to bring each image back onto a light box if they wish, if they haven't seen them already.

Because remember, some of those images may not have been assessed by the, well. It cannot have been assessed by all seven of the judges, so there's always gonna be at least two judges who haven't seen that image or seeing it for the first time as a judge. So we bring them back, we look at them, and then we rank them using one of numerous voting mechanisms where we all vote on what we think are the best images and gradually whittle it down until we're left with a ranked order for that category.

We have a winner, a second, a third, a fourth, sometimes all the way down to 10 in order, depending on the competition. And that's the fairest way of doing it, because it means, okay, during the judging, [00:42:00] that image got, I dunno, 87. But when we now baseline it against a couple of images that got 90 something, when we now look at it, we realize that that image probably should have got a 90 as well.

We're not gonna rescore it, the score stands, but what we are gonna do is put it up into there and vote on it as to whether it actually, even though it got slightly lower, score, is the winning image for the category. And every competition does something similar just to redress any fluctuations to, to flatten out time.

It takes time outta the equation because now for that category, all seven judges are judging the winner at the same time, and that's really important. We do that for all the categories, and then at the end of that process, we bring back all of the category winners and we vote on which one of those. Wins the competition.

Now, not every competition has an overall winner, but for the one we've just done for the print masters, for the BIPP print masters, there is an overall winner. And so we set them all out [00:43:00] and we vote collectively as a winner on the winner. And then, oh, we rank them 1, 2, 3, 4, or whatever. Um, really we're only picking a winner, but we also have to have some safety nets because what happens if for instance.

Somebody unearths a problem with an image. And this has happened, sadly, this has happened a couple of times in my career where a photographer has entered an image that's not compliant with the rules but hasn't declared it. And it's always heartbreaking when it does happen, but we have to have a backup.

So we always rank one, two, and three. So that's some backups, and that's the process. That's how we finish everything off. We have finished, we've got all the categories judged, the category winners judged, and then the overall one, two, and three sorted as well.

at the end of the process? I can't speak for every judge. I can speak for me, I feel, I think three things. Exhaustion. It's really hard to spend 48 hours or longer [00:44:00] assessing images one by one, by one by one, and making sure that you are present and paying attention to every detail of every image.

And you're not doing an author or an image a disservice. You pay each image or you give each image, you pay each image the due attention it deserves. I feel exhilaration. There's something energizing about assessing images like this. I know it's hard to explain, but there's something in the process of being alongside some of the best photographers that you've ever met, some photographers that you admire more than any others, not just as photographers, but as human beings.

The nicest people, the smartest people, the most experienced people, the most eloquent people. There's something in that. So there's this [00:45:00] exhilaration. You are exhausted, but there's an exhilaration to it. And then finally, and I don't know if every photographer feels this or every judge feels this, I do.

Which is massively insecure, I think. Can't think of the right words for it. There must be one. But I come away, much like when you've been out on the beers and you worry about all the things you've said, it's the same process. There was that image I didn't give enough credit for. There was this image I was too generous on.

There were the things I said in a challenge when it gets a little bit argumentative or challenging. 'cause the clues in the title, you know, maybe I pushed too hard, maybe I didn't push hard enough. There are images you've seen that you wished you'd taken and you feel like. I'm not good enough. There's an insecurity to it too, and those are the three things I think as you leave the room, it's truly [00:46:00] energizing.

Paradoxically, it's truly exhausting, but it's also a little bit of a head mush in that you do tend to come, or I do tend to come away a little bit insecure about. All the things that have gone on over the two days prior, and I've done this a long time. I've been judging for, I dunno, 15, 16, 17 years. And I've got used to those feelings.

I've got used to coming away worrying.

I'm used to the sense of being an underachiever, I suppose, and it's a wonderful , set of emotions that I bring home. And every time I judge. I feel better for it. I feel more creative. I feel more driven. I feel more determined. I feel like my eyes have been opened to genres [00:47:00] of photography, for types of imagery, for styles of posing or studio work that I've never necessarily considered, and I absolutely adore it every single second.

So at the end of that, I really hope I've described or created a picture of what it's like to be a judge for this one. I haven't tried to explain the things we saw that as photographers as authors, you should think about when you are entering. I'm gonna do that in a separate podcast. I've done so many of those, but this one was specifically like, what does it feel like to be a judge?

Why do we do it? I mean, we do it for a million reasons. Mostly we do it because people helped us and it's our turn to help them. But every photographer has a different reason for doing it. It's the most joyful process. It's the most inspiring process and I hope you've got a little bit of that from the podcast.

So [00:48:00] on that happy note, I'm gonna wrap up and I'm gonna go and finish my glass of whiskey which I'm quite excited about if I'm honest. 'cause I did, it's been sitting here beside me for an hour and I haven't drunk any of it. I do hope you're all doing well. I know winter is sort of clattering towards us and the evenings are getting darker, at least for my listeners in the north and the hemisphere.

Don't forget. If you want more information on portrait photography or our workshops we've announced all of the upcoming dates or the next set of upcoming dates. Please head across to mastering portrait photography.com and go to the workshop section. I love our workshops and we've met so many.

Just lovely people who've come to our studio. And we've loved being alongside them, talking with them, hopefully giving a bit of inspiration, certainly taking a little bit of inspiration, if I'm honest, because everyone turns up with ideas and conversations. Uh, we would love to see you there. The workshops are all are all there on the website and the workshop section.

You can also, if you wish, buy a signed copy of the book from mastering portrait photography.com. Again, just go to the [00:49:00] shop and you'll see it there on the top. Amazon has them for sale too. It is great. Amazon typically sells them for less than we do, but we have a fixed price. We have to buy them from the wholesaler at a particular price, whereas Amazon can buy many, many more than we can, so they get a better deal if I'm honest.

However, if you want my paw print in there, then you can order it from us and it's supports a photographer and it's really lovely to hear from you. When you do, uh, one thing, I'd love to ask anyone who has bought the updated edition of the book, if you are an Amazon customer. Please could you go on to amazon.com and leave us a review?

It's really powerful when you do that, as long as it's a good review. If it's a rubbish review, just email me and tell me what I could have done differently, and I'll email you back and tell you, tell you why I didn't. But if it's a half decent review, a nice review. Please head over to Amazon. Look for mastering portrait photography, the new version of the book, and leave us a review.

It's really important particularly in the first couple of [00:50:00] weeks that it's been on sale. Uh, it would be really, really helpful if you did that. And on that happy note, I wish you all well. I've grabbed my glass of whiskey and I'm gonna wrap up and whatever else you do. Until next time, be kind to yourself.

Take care.

167 episodes

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EP168 Inside The Print Room - What It's Like To Be A Judge

The Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast

published 1d ago