Throwing Fuel on the Flames

[Mike Farley]

Its annual International Print Exhibtion has just opened and the winners announced, so once again it is open season on the RPS. Rightly so in my view. There is another thread (link below) where the merits or otherwise of the selected images are discussed, but there is a further issue where I thought I would stoke the embers and add a few more logs to the fire.

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1719

Yesterday I went to a presentation by Leigh Preston FRPS, EFIAP, MPAGB who sits on RPS distinction assessment panels and he said something which caused a raised eyebrow, but not necessarily surprise. As digital sensors can capture information in shadow areas and noise can be corrected, the RPS deems absence of detail or noise in an image to be faults. Heaven help you if an image suffers from both. Aesthetic interpretation be damned, it's technical execution which matters most. This was mentioned during a meeting of the RPS Thames Valley Digital Imaging Group, so most if not all of those present would have been members of the RPS. The surprising thing is that this statement was accepted by everyone in the hall (myself included) and not queried, publicly at least although possibly in private conversation with Leigh later, simply as one of those things which the RPS does.

Are we all such muttonheads that year on year we continue to support such a numbskull organisation which holds these views and thinks that the epitome of photography is demonstrated annually by a set of mostly boring prints? In the main all for the "privilege" of putting letters from said institution after our names. Time, I think, for me to consider whether my membership is really worthwhile.