Happily Ever After

Life in The Rural Retreat with a beautiful wife, three cats, garden wildlife, a camera, a computer – and increasing amounts about running

Earlier posts can be found on Adventures of a Lone Bass Player, where this blog began life. Recent entries can be found here.

The Eye Of The Beholder

by admin - 23:37 on 23 August 2012

I gave up entering 'proper' snappery competitions a while ago because I never won and often didn't understand why the winner did. However, I was tempted out of my sulk by the Royal Photographic Society's International Projected Image Exhibition 2012, which was judged recently.

Don't get excited – I didn't win.

The competition is split into general and natural history, to which entrants may submit a maximum of four snaps to each category. Being modest, I put one in each – Greengate and Young Marten – then later added Tess in her hollow log (in general) as a memorial to our much-missed moggy.

'Proper' competitions are judged by three experts who view the entries for around five seconds (literally – there were more than 4,000 entries last year so they can't hang around) and each give a mark from one to five. The mathematicians among you will have worked out already that the top score is fifteen.

Greengate – only worth six out of fifteen.

Today I received my score card. General entries must score eleven to be accepted for the exhibition. Greengate, which I consider the best snap I've taken, was given six; Tess did a little better with eight. Natural history entries must score twelve for acceptance – and that's what Young Marten was given.

Young Marten, considered twice as good. I Photoshopped out the bolt beneath her head, the hinge behind her ear and the branch above her head – don't tell the judges.

I should be pleased that some of my work will appear in a prestigious international exhibition (last year only 199 natural history snaps were accepted) but what I mostly feel is annoyed. How can Greengate be only half as good as the marten? What deficiencies don't I see? Or would another three judges have made a completely different selection?

In the end it doesn't matter – I know when I've taken something that's good (or bad) and if I'm happy with it that's enough.

So, no gold medal, but I'll receive a copy of the exhibition CD. I look forward with interest, and probably incomprehension, to seeing the winning snaps.

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