On Tuesday we all found out how hard it is to judge photographs, even within the structure of a worksheet with judging classes to work from. Janet had carefully prepared sheets on which we could mark the entries in 3 categories
- 3 marks for photographic technical merit
- 3 marks for presentation
- 3 marks for how well the theme came across
each marker also had 1 point they could arbitrarily assign to the entry they considered to be best. The entries were all anonomised with just an identifying letter, to allow unbiased judging. It is of course not possible to completely hide the author within the club, as some photographers have an easily recognised style or subject.
Last week it looked like we were not going to have sufficient entries, but one or two unexpected entries were submitted, and along with the entries from committee members who felt obliged to help make up the numbers we had a creditable field of 14.
Suddenly we all discovered why some judges have such a narrow range of marks, and why one sometimes hears the phrase “looking for a reason to mark down”
Everyone’s score sheet was collected and collated and the results were tight, with the top 5 places being:
| Letter | Place | Score | Name |
|---|---|---|---|
| O | 1st | 157 | Andrew Macpherson |
| F | 2nd= | 155 | David Woods |
| H | 2nd= | 155 | Audrey Smith |
| A | 3rd | 144 | Miriam Coe |
| M | 4th | 142 | Janet Hosford |
| L | 5th | 141 | Brian Johnson |
Tall Ships -- Winning entry
Well done everyone for taking part, I hope we all learned something to take away.
