I had applied to be examined for one of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB) awards in June 2018. This was for the Credit award (CPAGB). The first available places were at the adjudication to be held at the Coleg Llandrillo in Rhos-on-Sea, Conwy.
After applying, my preparation for the adjudication was limited to hearing the results of colleagues visits to a PAGB advisory day and sharing an example set of images with colleagues for their review.
Coleg Llandrillo
We arrived at the college shortly after 9.30 am and joined the queue of candidates waiting to hand their prints in to the organisers.
Once our prints and print boxes were gone we headed out of the college and braved the storm outside to walk up the road to a small Co-Op to pick up sandwiches for lunch.
On our return the gymnasium was open and we joined all the other candidates to wait for the start of adjudication.
At the front of the hall there was a light box for the prints to be viewed and away to the adjudicator’s right was a screen so that the audience could see a PDI version of each print. The adjudicators sat together with their voting pads on a table in front of the light box. Any of the prints could be passed to an adjudicator if they wanted a closer look at that print.
There were 60 candidates for print and 21 for PDI. There would be 600 prints and 210 PDIs to be reviewed. There were six very experienced PAGB judges who all vote on every image (i.e. the whole 810 by the end of the day!), in practice they have about 10 seconds to look at most images. The maximum possible number of votes for any one image is therefore 30 and the minimum is 12.
This was going to be a long day for everyone involved!
The adjudication
In order to gain the credit a candidate has to have 200 (or over) votes which is an average of 20+ for the 10 images.
This is a summary of my images, showing the order that that they were presented.
The four members of us from the camera club had consecutive entrant numbers. This did make it easier for us to spot when our images were going to be looked at.
The votes were 22, 20 and 18. This meant that I was exactly on target.
We noticed that insects and birds were consistently getting over 20 for their votes. Images that had a ‘single point of focus’ were consistently gaining more votes much than ones without. I was now regretting adding my image of the three scaffold builders in Oslo.
The votes were 21, 17 and 16. This meant that I was now down at -6 from the target.
My concerns over the scaffold builders had been correct but the even lower score for the silhouette was my first big disappointment of the day.
The votes were 24 and 21. I was now -1 from target and my hopes of getting the credit were now raised! With two more images to go I was hopeful as both images had scored well in club competitions.
Their votes were 16 and 14 respectively.
My final number of votes was then 191. Way off gaining the credit.
End of the day
Candidates who had achieved the credit all ‘lost’ one image to the PAGB to be used in future for training purposes. These were all displayed on racks at the side of the hall.
During a short break failing candidates had had their images reviewed when there had been a wide variation on scores by the adjudicators. One candidate had his votes adjusted and was added to the candidates achieving the credit. Then the hall was re-arranged and we sat and watched the 210 PDI entries be voted on.
Before the presenting of badges (the certificates come later) I approached one of the six adjudicators to ask about the low votes that had concerned me the most.
Returning to base:
“too much black, should have been cropped from the bottom and from the right”
Caught spray painting:
“the model’s face is the wrong colour, processed incorrectly, orange face”
Dancing Lily:
“I don’t like images like this”
Paul Hendley very kindly provided us with a summary of the distribution of the votes.
After the presentation of the badges we left for the short drive back to our hotel. The proceedings started at around 10.30 am and the day ended after the presentations at about 5 pm. A long day indeed!
In summary
My take on my low scoring images:
- Vixen on the prowl was probably too soft and should not have been included (18)
- Scaffold by Escher did not have a strong focal point and should not have been included (17)
- Returning to base scored well in the club but the preponderance of black (when compared to the majority images on the day) was probably too much (16)
- Caught spray painting scored well in the club and the model’s skin is accurately represented, my conclusion would be to avoid images where a 10-15 second review might be mis-lead by some of the colours (16)
- Dancing Lily is clearly a ‘Marmite’ image. This image also scored well in the club which is why I included it in my selection. Demonstrating my ability to have in-camera double exposures is clearly not what the adjudicators were looking for. This perhaps also falls into the necessity of having a strong focal point on every image (14)
These are my conclusions as to what might be needed for a future attempt:
- A single strong focal point, sharp (or even ultra sharp) focus on EVERY image
- Be careful with trick photography or post-processing and always maintain a strong focal point as above
- A3 prints are NOT a requirement as we saw images that were no more than 25 cm square (or less) achieving over 20 votes
- Birds or insects in the centre of the frame score highly (to our surprise these included lots of ‘birds on a stick’ images including kingfishers)
- Larger mammals were rarely included in the images except to our surprise a relatively large number of harvest mice, monkeys etc. There were a couple images of polo being played and horses jumping – perhaps the same candidate?
- Portraits without a ‘story’ did not often get votes over 20
- Landscapes mostly did not get votes of 20 or more
- Close-up images of objects did not get good high votes (for example one candidate had a series of close-ups of parts of cars)
- Images that were obviously from Timeline Events were not penalised and mostly scored 20 votes or more. These images included the staged re-enactors under a silhouetted Lancaster, re-enactors on a steam covered platform with train all back-lit, Victorian dressed re-enactors at Blists Hill near Ironbridge, steam trains passing by etc)
- There is (perhaps) no requirement to have a variety of subjects in the 10 images. As the day progressed we saw repeated images of grey herons, owls, kingfishers, various monkeys, butterflies and preying mantis. In summary, multiple images of the same subject are OK in your set of images.
- As candidates from the same club are grouped together, care should be taken on sequencing of images. We noted similar images occurring next to each other in the overall sequence. For example storm waves breaking over a lighthouse, monkeys, owls (most often together) and similar insects on a stick (next most often together).