September 2, 2007

• Judging the Judges

  The judges to whom I refer are the Xangans who, like me, participate in the StarAcademy.  Some of them, to judge by the stats, do it a lot more frequently than I do.  I pop in there less than once a week.  The activity has a challenge level for me somewhere between playing a video game (nothing at stake, but I attempt to do well at it anyway) and creative writing or capturing, cropping, and adjusting photo images, where skill is involved and not only my aesthetic sensibilities and artistic integrity are at stake but there is also the matter of my public image. 

  I have enjoyed contest judging since I was in 4H and learned how to judge agricultural exhibits at the fair.  Winning ribbons in 4H judging competitions, by making judgments that matched those of more experienced judges, was as rewarding as winning ribbons for my agricultural entries.  In the Academy here, after judging an image, the judgments of those who came before me are displayed, so I can see how my judgments compare with theirs.  After a few weeks of observing this, I’ve reached a few conclusions.

  One of the the first things I observed was that a few people give their own innocuous images a “C for caution” rating, apparently counting on that to draw attention from salacious adolescents.  I also noticed that about a third of the time, my “star” scoring (one to five stars) conforms to that of the majority, or at least to the average when the scores are spread all over the place.  In instances where my score does not conform to the majority or the average, I have noticed some patterns and can make some generalizations concerning them.

  About half the people who participate in the Academy pay scant or no attention to technical or artistic merit in the photos they score, scoring them instead on content alone, using aesthetic, emotional, or other subjective criteria.  Pictures of puppies, kittens, babies, smiling groups of people, rainbows, sunsets and pretty scenery are likely to have higher overall scores than other subject matter, regardless of technical values such as lighting, composition, focus, etc.

  There is apparently a core group of judges who pay attention to such things as composition and lighting, and who tend to agree with each other on most of the images and disagree with the “emotionally motivated” group when the content is inconsistent with the values of that group that prefers the kittens and rainbows.  This shows up, for example, when there is a badly framed, unfocused shot of a cute baby, with the majority of votes split between ones and fives, with sometimes a scattering of a few 2s, 3s and 4s.

  I was amused to note a pattern that is fairly consistent for images that are technically excellent except for composition.  One of the most prevalent technical faults for photographers is the dead-center image.  Other faults in technique are apt to receive one- or two-star scores from the expert judges when a proliferation of five-stars shows that the image appealed to the “pretty-lovers”.  This would include camera tilt or shake, for example, on images of smiling families or cute kittens.  Well-focused sunset shots with brilliant colors, and macro-images of perfect flowers, when perfectly centered, invariably have a majority of five-star scores from the pretty-lovers, but not the number of ones or twos found with images possessing different faults.   In the right-up-the-middle shots, I, and quite a few other judges, tend to comment on that particular fault by giving the image a 3-star score, right up the middle.

  The unfortunate and mildly annoying result of the participation of so many otherwise indiscriminate pretty-lovers is that mediocre images remain too long alongside some truly excellent photos, and some excellent images get bumped in a hurry if just one or two people don’t like the subject matter.  Today, I gave a five-star score to a beautiful and technically brilliant shot of an insect on a flower, and noted afterward that in addition to several other fives there were a bunch of low scores, presumably from people who don’t like bugs.  One of my macros of the inner part of a Potentilla flower, a while back, was flying high with a number of 5-star scores, until it got shot down by one little girl giving it a one-star score and a comment of “eeeeeewww.”

  One place where judgments are even more widely split than usual is on the images posted by Xanga’s premier plagiarist.  A blatant publicity hound, he takes images off the web, posts them to his photoblog without credit to their creators, and stars them himself so they will be featured.  They receive star scores based mostly on how people feel about the photos’ content, the stories/captions that go with them, and/or the man who posts them.

  Today, two of my images have been featured on Xanga’s front page.  Both were posted here about four months ago.  One is an undistinguished shot of Granny Mousebreath, apparently appealing to the pretty-kitty-lovers.  The other is the skillfully cropped lucky shot I captured of two wood frogs mating, which apparently has some prurient interest, since it is not very aesthetically appealing or technically brilliant.  Some say there is no such thing as bad publicity, but if I had my druthers, I’d rather be recognized for some of my better work.

  

  • 3:33 pm
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