CCC Forum

The club has just hed the first of the new style Master Trophy competitions, which is now a panel contest. The evening was well supported, with 24 members entering in either the DPI or Print competitions and ensured that the judge had his work cut out.

As this was the initial event, I invite you to give your feedback via this thread. What worked well? Where would you like to see changes or improvements, if any? That includes how you found the entry process. (See also my comments about PhotoEntry below.) It is a learning curve both for the club and individuals.

It has been my practice this season as soon as I get home to upload the competition scores from DiCentra (our competition software) into PhotoEntry and send out an e-mail with the results. That is not possible on this occasion as neither DiCentra nor PhotoEntry fully support panel competitions, especially the way we hold ours. Configuring both applications involved some compromises and the development of workarounds to achieve what we wanted. Consequently, I have some additional work to do before the results will be available. I will need to confirm, but I believe that PhotoEntry will only show the score for individual images and not the panels. That information will be published on the club's website in due course.

I have already written to both the respective software developers and will be following up now that I have the experience of running a panel competition. I am hopeful that there will be some enhancements to both before we hold the competition again next season. In fact, as a result of my intervention, a small amendment was made to PhotoEntry before entries opened which made the submission process slightly easier.

Finally, my congratulations to our two worthy winners this evening, David Beard in the DPI competition and Paul Wenham in the Print.

Firstly I enjoyed the challenge of trying to put together a panel, so please do repeat it next year. My main ask is it would be great if I could name the pictures as well as the panel as I think that might have helped in some cases.

The Judge done a great job by going through all the entries and keeping to time. Oddly enough, I would have liked a bit more feedback. Could he maybe see the pictures as a panel and then focus on a picture or two and provide some feedback. Is this a competition, better run where we properly submit our images in advance (1-2 weeks) to enable the Judge to review before the night.

Would it be possible to run a session earlier in the term next year to discuss what a good panel looks like, and have some examples and tips on how to create one. I found from looking at my pictures that in general my outings created two great pictures, but to create a panel I needed another outing to the same location to round it off, to get a third. Or a had a series of three pictures, but there wasn't enough variety to fully tell a story.

The DPI and print sections were well run and I was pleasantly surprised that two different trophies were awarded. This seemed to work well, though I wonder if some game playing might happen next year on choosing what competition to enter.

Hi Sarah

Thanks for your comments. You make some good points and I have given my own observations as your views raise further questions for the debate.

Sarahrs wrote:Firstly I enjoyed the challenge of trying to put together a panel, so please do repeat it next year. My main ask is it would be great if I could name the pictures as well as the panel as I think that might have helped in some cases.

It is good to know that you enjoyed the challenge, which is different to the other type of competitions which the club holds. With 24 members participating, it demonstrates that there is general enthusiasm for this type of contest.

With regard to titles for individual images, this was a limitation imposed by PhotoEntry. It was possible give a name either to the panel or to the images, just not both. That said, as a panel competition there are different criteria and the emphasis is more on producing a cohesive set of images. In that context, are titles for each photo necessary? Opinions are definitely invited on that question.

Sarahrs wrote:The Judge done a great job by going through all the entries and keeping to time. Oddly enough, I would have liked a bit more feedback. Could he maybe see the pictures as a panel and then focus on a picture or two and provide some feedback. Is this a competition, better run where we properly submit our images in advance (1-2 weeks) to enable the Judge to review before the night.

24 entries is 72 images, but as the judge himself pointed out the panel is an extra component, so there were 96 comments to be made in the space of 90 minutes. In those circumstances any feedback will of necessity be brief. Should the judge concentrate on just one or two images, as you suggest, or in this instance would it be preferable to limit comments to the panel as a whole?

On this occasion, the judge was explicitly not allowed any form of preview, the intent being to avoid comparison with the images being judged with those which followed. He was clearly not comfortable with that, especially at the beginning of the evening. So another question. Is allowing a preview a good idea or not?

Sarahrs wrote:Would it be possible to run a session earlier in the term next year to discuss what a good panel looks like, and have some examples and tips on how to create one.

I believe that there were plans to hold such a session this season prior to the competition but that did not work out. It is hoped to do something before the next competition and the club is researching possible speakers.

Sarahrs wrote:I found from looking at my pictures that in general my outings created two great pictures, but to create a panel I needed another outing to the same location to round it off, to get a third. Or a had a series of three pictures, but there wasn't enough variety to fully tell a story.

That is all part of the challenge of creating a panel. It is very different to creating shots which stand on their own. Sometimes it is necessary to include a weaker shot because it works better when viewed in context with the other images. What was the experience of others?

Sarahrs wrote:The DPI and print sections were well run and I was pleasantly surprised that two different trophies were awarded. This seemed to work well, though I wonder if some game playing might happen next year on choosing what competition to enter.

Having two trophies certainly introduces options. It will be interesting to see whether the ratio between DPI and Print changes radically next time.

Mike said:
I have already written to both the respective software developers

If the software developers could create a short cut so that you could move from showing and scoring the 3 images to showing the panel in lightbox for final scoring that would help you out.
Iggy

Iggy wrote:If the software developers could create a short cut so that you could move from showing and scoring the 3 images to showing the panel in lightbox for final scoring that would help you out.
Iggy

Displaying the DPI panels in the Lightbox was not ideal but it was the only option which enabled the images to be seen together. DiCentra's developer is aware of the issue and I am hoping that by time of the next competition a more elegant solution will be available.