How to Judge a Photo Contest
Recently I had the privilege of helping judge the San Diego CityBeat annual photo contest. It was fun despite being conducted through Flickr so that no one could hear my snarky comments. It was also a welcome excuse to ponder photography theory: How does one compare unrelated photos and ultimately choose one over the other, and just what exactly makes a successful photo anyway?
Us judges weren’t given any parameters – we just had to choose the best photos, whatever that meant to us. There was no explicit theme in mind, but it being a CityBeat contest I looked for images that carried the spirit of the alt-weekly.
Looking at all 905 entries gave me a rough idea of the visual interests of the submitting photographers. I used the entire swath as a preliminary vote of sorts – from their photos, I surmised that CityBeat readers loved landscapes, dogs, portraits and color. There were not many examples of photojournalism or documentary photography, so story-telling capacity and the presence of a decisive moment did not become strong criteria in my votes.
The first sweep of judging cleared away the rubbish. I nominated 75 or so images that were technically satisfactory and also interesting to some degree. Gone was any image that either failed on its own terms due to poor execution or set the bar so low that even though the photographer’s intent came across, nobody cared to notice. To some degree I favored novelty even if there were flaws in an image and I knew it would never win. I strongly ignored cliches even if they were technically flawless.
And there were a lot of cliches – dogs, cats, beaches, sunsets, over-saturated skies, Photoshop filters. One heavily Photoshopped cat somehow made it as far as the top 21.
On top of the submitters’ persuasions I layered my own knowledge of photographic theory, history and practice and tried to ignore my biases. Photos that resonated with me had at least one very strong quality above and beyond technical mastery – enough to set it apart from a multitude of images with otherwise similar style and subject matter. This quality could be color, composition or an engaging subject. At this point I’m talking about a dozen photos out of 905.
The hardest part of judging was that the best photos weren’t flukes and at least a couple photographers had multiple submissions in the final rounds. It was difficult to weigh a photographer’s work against itself when their submissions often went in different directions – a strong color vs. a strong monochrome, for example.
The winning photos and honorable mentions clearly exhibited strong formal elements – line, shape, color, tone – and had some sort of mood. The best were original yet evocative of classic images. I had qualms with some winners because they exhibited well-worn subjects, such as landscapes and travel. They were ‘safe’ images, which tend to do well in amateur contests because they have broad appeal. Some of the winners would have fallen into this category without some saving grace – a train adds a smear of color to a typical architecture photo, a sleeping dog punctuates a resting man in colorful garb. For a contest of this scale I was hoping for but not exactly expecting novel explorations of the medium.
My favorite image from the contest is an intimate portrait of photographer Chris Barnette’s daughter, entitled “Daniela Dreams.” It’s taken from a unique camera angle that plays with the literal scene – a girl floating calmly in a pool of crisply blue water – and inserts metaphor. The water could be sky, and the girl adrift could be flying. The lighting is simple, natural and effortless, just like the girl’s serene expression as she rests suspended. To me it’s reminiscent of some of the portraits Harry Callahan took of his wife Eleanor – excellent photography borne from a strong personal relationship. The great photographers from photo history are often adept at connecting with a multitude of subjects ranging from famous to familiar, but images like Barnette’s remind us that it just takes one special connection to make a great photograph.
"Daniela Dreams" by Chris Parnette won second place in the 2010 San Diego CityBeat photo contest.
