Judging Challenge and Criteria

Just had the opportunity to be the sole judge for the February competition of CPS, the Christchurch Photographic Society. I really enjoyed this challenge. This inspiring opportunity took me on a visual journey through a great variety of photography: Landscape, nature, portrait, sports, architecture, flower photography, stage, fine art, studio, funny and humorous photography, children, illustrative, cultural, feature, bird photography, car photography and of other vehicles, historic, creative, illustrative, macro and motion, photojournalism and personal photography - WOW! Quite a few examples of good postproduction and image manipulation as well.

I have tried to do my best with this judging, meaning to be fair and giving all images a chance, especially the ones I wasn't that fond of.

For this reason I have put together 21 criteria, which are separated into 4 main sections: the Wow factors with 5 criteria, the message factors with 5 criteria, the content factors with 6 criteria, and the technical factors with 5 criteria. Each one measured on a scale from 1 to 10, with 10 being the best mark.

If an image had no outstanding distinguishing aspect to it, it would get the neutral middle mark which is 5 and just under the qualifying mark of 6 to be accepted. So the cutting edge is mark 6, which means an average of 6 will get your image into acceptance.

Here are the criteria for your own testing. Please let me know, should you find some more. That would be very much appreciated. In case you publicly use this scheme or part of it somewhere, please credit the usage with © Maja Moritz Photography Workshops. Thank you!

After having finished judging using the criteria, I had another look and made a last "gut" run over all images, and that  brought up some changes. I looked at all images again just under 2 main overall criteria:

Is it an exceptional shot in any way which makes it relevant for a competition?

How much influence had the photographer into making a good picture, a better one opposed to an image which only lives of showing something, which is just mainly plainly depicted?

For all of us, different aspects matter in different ways, but those aspects which matter for all of us are the ones which deserve more attention and they ultimately define what is considered exceptional! Exceptionality always will be something which has to be agreed on by the majority of people involved.

While judging an overall observation was that message & meaning fall short to content & technique.
A very important question in this context, which I asked myself over and over again, can also help you to gain more clarity about this: "What is this image actually telling me?"


View the judging results
February Competition Results

View the CPS website
CPS Christchurch Photographic Society


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