Watching the judging at the AIPP awards has confirmed my belief that judging creative output is educational rather than either accurate or particularly informative. That five judges have completely different responses to many images proves that there are no definitives and I'm not at all sure about the rejudging aspect where individual judges promote the qualities of an admired image in an endeavour to convince others to change their opinion and then rescore. Then again, I'm completely new to the process so have a lot to learn. Perhaps most frustrating of all was the judges who constructed the photographer's narrative based on their own life experience. Many of the comments seemed rather banal and a reflection of judge preferences rather than informative in any way. I think I'll scream if I hear the term "colour palette" once again. Some of the less illuminating comments delivered were:
.... I like to see images that I haven't seen anything like before.....
.... I'm not getting distracted by those colour things like I usually do ......
.... I just wanted to really like this, but go back there and reshoot it .....
.... The little orange thing that the eye is drawn towards really makes the shot ....
.... I was distracted by the orange, not attracted ....
.... it simply appealed to me....
.... its difficult to explain why I really like something....
.... it's leaving me with a mystery....
.... it's an emotive landscape so I'm not evaluating it as a technical landscape ....
Really. Exactly what did any of us learn about photography by any of those comments other than the fact that different people respond to images in different ways and how do we evaluate the worth of one person's expression above another's ? There were some instances where compositional elements were commented upon but they were few and far between.
Most photographers process the images they capture with their cameras. Exactly how and to what degree then becomes a matter of individual taste and software familiarity rather than photographic expertise. To clone or not to clone, to blur or not to blur, to sharpen or not to sharpen, to crop or not to crop. I have moved through different stages in my own processing journey. Currently I'm not after authenticity, but exploring effects which can transform the reality. There is however no denying the fact that post processing can completely transform what is captured by the camera.
image SOOC which does nothing to capture the highly saturated colours of Central Australia
processed image - an endeavour to bring the foreground into focus and relieve the boredom of the clear blue sky
No comments:
Post a Comment