11 Feb Helpful Tips & Advice with Competition Judge Beverly Walden!
We continue our series with our next competition judge, Beverly Walden!
1. Coming from a Professional Photographers of America background and having judged by their standards, I would have to say my number one tip is their number one tip in a national judging and that is IMPACT! For me, a definition of IMPACT that I came up with years ago is this…
IMPACT=Creative Composition and Unusual Approach
Does the image have impact-does it touch my heart and soul and cause me to stop in my tracks? What is the emotion that it pulls out of me as I view it? I have seen so many images that are technically perfect but emotionally deficient. This is not to say you can slide by on the technical side with an emotional image, but the perfect image to me is one that has both the emotion and technical excellence.
2. The second thing I would suggest is to make sure the images you enter are technically proficient. By this, I mean are they correctly exposed, cropped and posed? Does the crop cut off a hand or foot in the wrong place? Are the highlights blown out? Is there detail in the shadow or is it all just one “blob” of black? Is the pose weak or poorly done? Was the correct lens used? Are the colors correct in the print itself? Use print competition to improve these areas and get stronger.
3. The third and final suggestion I would make is to select images that tell a story rather than a statically posed photograph. The images I especially love are the ones that allow me to make up my own story as I look at the image, letting my imagination freely flow.
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