Following on from my article recently on Judging and Looking at Photographs, I have read further Ken Holland’s book “Looking at Photographs” and would like to share some further thinking and meaningful observations. (Link to Previous article)
First of all let us look at some very famous quotes by some very famous worldwide photographers.
“Photography is all about light, composition and, most importantly, emotion” Larry Wilder.
“Blind prejudice can be more dangerous than any artistic movement” Paul Hill.
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people to see without a camera” Dorothea Lange.
“A good photograph is a full expression of what one feels” Ansel Adams.
“The art of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how” Margaret Atwood.
“The greatest value of a picture is when it forces us to notice what we never expect to see” John W Tukey
“Two qualities are essential for a great photographer – insatiable curiosity, and a precise sense of form” Brassai
“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer” David Bailey.
“A Photograph is the pause button of life” Ty Holland.
If the viewer doesn’t get it, you’ve failed to communicate” Elliott Erwitt.
A pictorial composition is not merely an assemblage of objects truthfully represented, it is the expression of an idea” Arthur Dow.
If we can try and interpret many of these quotes well, our understanding of viewing, judging and experiencing images takes not only our perceptions of images to another level but surely takes our photography also up a notch.
Our photography improves by viewing, experiencing, and sharing with the work of others. It improves through our mishaps and disappointments, through constructive feedback from our judges around the country. Club photography, Salons and our Honours and Awards facility provide us with a platform to exhibit our work and gauge where we are in our photography. Clubs are experiencing an influx of new members, which surely is evidence that Photography is very much alive and well.
When in the UK recently I had the great honour of attending three different camera functions and was at the last minute asked to do a short presentation at one of them, which was a bit daunting at first but went down well.
The one aspect that stood out for me tremendously at one of these camera functions was their judging process. The judge had been given the images a week and a half in advance to view and judge at his leisure, in his own home. He then came to the Club Evening and presented the images, giving them a score plus his evaluation on the image and announced the overall winners at the end. This was for me, a tremendous learning. I learned such a lot that particular evening just from his feedback on each image. Definitely food for thought here, especially when Club evenings are getting longer and at some Clubs no comments are allowed on the gold awards to cut down on the time factor., which is understandable. Also, as we all know the sliding scale can give out gold awards when perhaps it should not be so high and therefore the author goes away thinking he or she has a good image and enters it into a salon and it gets rejected and wonders why. Ok it is all part of the judging system as we all know but for me the learning process is falling away a lot, which I personally see as detrimental to all of us, irrespective of what level we are at. Photography continues, in my opinion, to be a continual learning process.
In conclusion, thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts to date with you and please continue to present and share your photography as widely as possible within your environment but most important is to enjoy it for yourself.
EVELYN GIBSON, FPSSA, EPSSA, AFIAP, ARPS.
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