Peter said:
I don't think there should be an excess focus on judges and what they do, but more on the process of how/why an image is good or not.
You are right on that score. That is the best way to proceed.
Mike said:
No allowance has been made for the extra 10% "judge's discretion", so not all the marks have been accounted for.
In a previous email to me, Roger said that he was using the A, B & C ratings (55%, 30% & 15%) for the different elements of the assessment (Narrative, Composition and Technical) and in the end he gave an overall Gold, Silver or Bronze assessment resulting in 1 gold, 5 silvers and 10 bronzes. The scoring reflected a comparison and ranking amongst the images and the scores could be different if compared to different images although the element scores (ABC) would not change.
That's where Judge's discretion comes into it!
I have been in email contact with some judges who have visited us recently and 2 have kindly responded. For the most part they use a similar system for marking. For these experienced judges, marking is second nature to them, so much so that they do not physically give points for each element of the image which they then add up. Rather, they have trained their brains to do all that mentally without too much effort, and come up with an overall assessment in around 2 minutes. Obviously judges' preferences and discretion come in to play and sometimes they might miss the plot, but then they are only human.
Roger's workshop was presented to give us some knowledge of a marking scheme and what to look out for to try and improve our images for competition. It was also there to show us the difficulty a judge has in assigning results to 50+ images in an hour and a half.
For the most part though, we take photos for our own pleasure and because we enjoy the hobby.
Iggy
