Competitions kill photography
“Photography is not a sport, it has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried.”
Bill Brandt
Rather a controversial statement I think you’ll agree!
Why am I saying that? Well, let’s explore a few ideas and then re-visit that statement and see what we all think, hmm?
Whether you’re a member of a local camera club or a national, even international photography group, I guess you’re interested in photography in some form or other. A significant part of many camera clubs and other photography groups, is competitive photography. Photographs are judged against one another and awarded points (or some other award) to show which photograph is better than another.
Ages ago, I was told that competitions will improve my photography: “Listen to the judges my boy and you shall learn!” they said. I listened. I learned. I learned…not what I was expecting to!
Why do people enter photography competitions? I’ve managed to come up with three reasons – you might have more or less. In no particular order: to learn and so improve; to win and lastly to show everyone their images.
Let’s look at each of those reasons. To learn and so improve. How does that work? Firstly, we get to see what other people have entered. That in itself can serve to show us how and what to take photographs of. I have certainly learned in that way. Secondly, we have our work judged by a good, in inverted commas, photographer: the judge. An integral part of that judging is the feedback from the judge: the things they like and the things that could be improved about an image.
Second reason: to win. Well, pretty basic really, no need to spend much time on this reason. Of course, not everyone wants to win, that must be borne in mind.
Lastly, but by no means the least important, showcasing their images. If another entrant says how much they like your shot, that is a big boost. If that entrant is someone whose work you admire and they have just complimented you on your work – how good is that? Terrific!
Well then, why have I decided that “Competition Kills Photography” then? Those 3 reasons I’ve just gone through seem perfectly OK don’t they?
Bear with me, I’ll get there!
Many, many judges simply cannot properly judge! I have heard a judge comment that as they don’t like architecture, “This image will not score highly.” I don’t care if the judge doesn’t like architecture, I don’t care a hoot – they must still judge that image on its merits. On another occasion, I heard a judge commenting on the image they were actually judging that they don’t like sports photography so “I have to mark this image down.” Extraordinary! Yes, both incidents were at a local club level but the judges concerned are drawn from a fairly broad regional group. Perhaps worse still, I have seen several instances where a judge will praise an average image of a dog after regaling the audience with stories of his or her dog of the same breed!
Over the years, I’ve heard similar comments about a worryingly large number of judges throughout the UK.
I make no apologies for the following: those judges are simply not fit to judge. Their personal likes and especially dislikes must NEVER be their guide in judging an image. That sort of judging can put a competitor off from entering, especially a newish competitor: really dent their confidence and make them doubt their own ability.
How many times have we seen a judge simply fail to grasp the entire idea behind an image? Odder still, most of the audience manage to ‘get it’ straight away so it wasn’t a very complex idea! I know why, or at least, I think I do. These judges are simply not seeing the image in its entirety: they are only seeing parts of it. “My eye is really drawn to the pale patch…” Oh! Here we go. It seems to be a favourite phrase for so many judges. Worse still, it is the start of a list of faults: composition, white balance, exposure, focus, depth of field and so on.
If you are fairly new to photography, there may be things which will, in your eyes improve your photographs. As I said back a-ways, I have definitely learned from a few judges. Now, have I put that learning into effect? Well, I know what makes them mark down an image!
If you, as a new-ish photographer, have entered an image into a competition, you’ll probably be quite nervous, after all, your work is about to be judged by a judge, not your mate but a real, live ‘judge’, some kind of photographic god! How disappointed are you going to be when said ‘god’ utterly fails to see your image in the round, to understand it; picks it apart, bit by bit…then gives you a 7½ out of 10 (which, by the way, just means ‘ordinary’!)
Art cannot be judged. There, I said it! Not just photography, but any art. I have on my bookshelf at home a work which was shortlisted for the Man-Booker prize. It is, in my opinion, absolute rubbish and I don’t like it at all. Oh, I hear you say, wait just a minute, you’re judging that! Yes. Yes I am. I think it is badly written, poorly constructed and totally disjointed. But more than that, I simply cannot understand why the writer wrote it. But, and here it comes folks, it was short-listed…which means a bunch of other people did think it was good, perhaps very good. So, now we have a difference of opinion. I might not like a particular photograph, but that doesn’t make it a bad photograph. In fact, what on earth is a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ photograph?
I was discussing films with some friends and one said a particular film I liked was a bad film. In fact they became quite voluble about how bad it was. I won’t repeat their words verbatim! I countered with the argument “You may not like it but that doesn’t make it a bad film per se. Of course, if the writing is poor or the sound or the lighting or the cinematography or editing etc then you could say that it was a bad film, but not just because you don’t like it.” We didn’t speak for some time – several months as I remember!
The point I’m making is that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as the saying goes.
Art does not stand still, it changes with time. Look at the painting movements Renaissance, Baroque, Romanticism, Realism, Art Nouveau, Impressionism etc. See how they have changed with time? It still does and this applies to all art: music, sculpture, performance, dance and so on. Much, though definitely not all, of photography is art – and I suggest to you that most competition photography is art.
Have you heard of the so-called ‘12 elements of a merit image?’ The Professional Photographers of America and the Guild of Photographers in the UK use this system when judging images for competition:
Impact, technical excellence, creativity, style, composition, presentation, colour balance, centre of interest, lighting, subject matter, technique and story-telling.
Images are examined in light of (excuse the pun!) each of those 12 elements. Well, I guess it’s better than having no system at all, but the problem here, for me, is that it encourages the judges to pick the image apart, in 12 different ways!
As I said before, much of what is entered I’d call art photography. Should you be picking apart a piece of art? In fact, really, can you? On what factual basis? As far as a photograph is concerned, what if it was supposed to be out of focus? What if the horizon was supposed to be crooked? What if the white balance was supposed to be off?
I don’t think that art can be disassembled into twelve aspects, ranked on each and then be measured on the sum of those.
Also, art, as well we know, goes in and out of fashion. A couple of years ago, if you wanted to win a club competition, photograph some frogs on a stick or some field-mice on a teasel – guaranteed to do well. Now? Not so much.
A dictionary definition of competition (one of many, all very similar): “an event or contest in which people take part in order to establish superiority or supremacy in a particular area”.
So, someone wins and everyone else loses. No, stop shaking your heads: if you don’t win, you lose, fact. Winning and losing are mutually exclusive, whether you like it or not!
So, you want to win? In which case, the photograph must be ‘correct’. Correct in whose eyes? The judge’s of course. However, as we have already seen, the judge may not ‘get it’. This is not a running race: the winner is ‘judged’ to have won because their work is ‘judged’ to be better than everyone else’s. I don’t care if you use the so-called 12 elements of a merit image to try and quantify the judging, it is still subjective: it is qualitative, not quantitative.
Perhaps the photographer meant to have the subject exactly centred and not on a third. Perhaps the photographer wanted featureless blacks and blown whites. Perhaps the photographer wanted that big negative space.
So, maybe you win. Well done you. I actually mean that too, really, well done. No, no clever remark next, just “Well done!” It is quite an achievement to win a competition, even at club level let alone at some international salon.
The problem is all the others, the losers. If you’re a seasoned old hand at photography competitions then you shrug and smile and genuinely congratulate the winner. If you’re a bit new at all this competition thing, then you may well wonder where on earth you went wrong. The judge may not have said anything especially bad about your image, in fact may have been really quite complimentary…then given it an 8. What did you do wrong? How can you get better?
In all honesty you may not have done anything wrong at all – it’s just that the judge liked someone else’s image more than yours. Judging IS subjective, it just is – fact. As such, one judge may like your image more than another or vice versa. Remember also that a judge will also be judging the images presented against the other images presented on that evening, even if only subconsciously. In fact, the judge will also be comparing the images to all the other similar images he or she has seen, perhaps subconsciously, but all the same!
If you enter competitions to win, you may spend a lot of your time early on, perhaps all of your time, disappointed!
I suspect that, maybe even subconsciously (that word again), we often submit images which will satisfy a typical judge’s requirements. Of course I’m generalising but, for instance, an image which is ‘tack sharp’, no blown highlights, no featureless blacks, no over-sharpening halos, no colour cast, no haze, no light patches which draw the eye, major features on a third, no horizon equally dividing the image and so on and so on.
We may be looking through our images, discarding those which don’t satisfy our received view of perfection, received because that is what the judges have said is perfection. I am absolutely certain that we all have images we have not submitted which are beautiful, really striking, quite lovely, cleverly thought through, well composed – but we haven’t entered them because we know what the judge will say.
Well, I want to see them – those are stunning images, I WANT TO SEE THEM. To paraphrase The Duke of Wellington: “Enter and be damned!”
Don’t allow yourself to be cowed into not entering an image because you don’t think a judge will like this or that part of it which is, for you, an important aspect of the image as a whole.
When we enter our images, we should enter the ‘whole image’, to be seen as the whole image, not to be seen as separated out bits. If that were the case, we might just as well submit the raw binary data instead and not bother looking at the image at all!
I should say that if there are clear faults in an image which could be corrected and in so doing will enhance it, then sort them out!
If there is half road sign on the edge which does not form an integral part of the image, get rid of it. If you can crop it out, do it. If you have to resort to PhotoShop and cloning, then do that. Oh, and while I’m here being controversial, here’s another one for you. Don’t use the excuse of not knowing how to do something in PhotoShop to not do it. Learn how to do it or don’t submit the image! Also, don’t use the “I don’t have Photoshop” excuse – that is just an excuse. If you don’t have or don’t want to use PhotoShop, and you don’t have to, there’s no law about that, then don’t. But if your image needs photo processing software to fix something and you don’t have it, take a better photograph in the first place! Position yourself so that the lamp post is not sticking out of the top of that person’s head…and if you can’t change your position, don’t take the shot!
So, competitions kill photography? Yes. They weed out the different, the strange, the daring and condemn them as ‘not good enough’. At best they dent your confidence and at worst they destroy your faith in your own work. Do they teach you to take better photographs? No, they don’t. That little statement there goes against what I was told when I first joined the club – you can only learn through competition. What absolute rubbish! Unfortunately, at the time, I didn’t know any better and I believed that. Now I do know better.
Bill Brandt, considered to be one of the most important British photographers of the 20th century said “Photography is not a sport, it has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried.” Competitions simply do not encourage that approach. Competitions prefer safe images; images that follow the rules…bland images. Why? Because that is what the judges like. Judges like ‘safe’ images because it gives them the opportunity to ignore the actual image and concentrate on just parts of it: that white patch, focus on this part, colour balance over here, shadows too dark over there and so on and so on.
When you take a photograph, take it for you, no one else, just you. Then process it for you as well. And if you print it, print it for you too. Don’t shoot for someone else, for what you think other people will like, including judges. Be true to yourself and your own photographic journey. No one genre of photography is any better than any other. If you begin to settle into a genre then go with it. Become the very best you possibly can be in that genre. If you find yourself settling into a particular style: grab it with both hands and run with it. Explore it fully, push the boundaries. What if you don’t find one particular genre or style? Does that mean you’re not a ‘proper’ photographer? Of course not, that would be a ridiculous thing to think or say. Above all else in photography, as with anything else: be the very best you can be. Yes, seek advice from others, listen and yes, maybe change this bit here and that bit there - but only if you think those changes enhance your image.
So, you have chosen an image for a competition. The judge judges it. They may or may not like it. They may want this bit moved or that bit taken out or that other bit changed in some way. If they do, they’re going to be disappointed. The image you present is the finished image. It cannot be made ‘better’ because it is already the best it can be!
Don’t for a moment think that that makes you sound arrogant: it really isn’t and this is why. Every part of that image has been crafted, every single bit of it. If there is a white patch there, then it is supposed to be there and it is supposed to be white. If there is no detail in the shadows, that is because there is supposed to be no detail in the shadows. If the subject is so dark they can hardly be seen then that is deliberate. If the subject is really blurred, then that is because the subject is supposed to be really blurred. If you have not followed the rules of photography then so what? If you have, quite deliberately, broken the rules of photography then fine, absolutely fine. Do what you do for you, not to please anyone else at all!
When I said your image cannot be made ‘better’ because it is already the best it can be, I did not mean that it is better than everyone else’s image only that it is the best version of that particular image, the best that you can make it. So, by all means accept critique of your image, even criticism of it but, if you do change an element of it, change it because you think the change will enhance it not just because someone says so.
Oh, and good luck in the competition 😁