As I think more about this topic, I'm losing some enthusiasm for it, at least for the idea of "competition winner." When you enter a competition, your results always come from a collision between your particular image and one particular (unknown) judge. And as we see week after week in the color and b/w challenges here, different judges see different things in images. To me, "competition winner" puts too much stress on things outside our control and not enough on making a good image. Maybe "competition worthy" would be better?
It'd be exciting as hell to win or even place in a major competition, and it was a kick just to get a couple of HMs. But the continuing satisfaction comes from submitting images I feel are good enough to belong (and from the extra effort in tuning I put in to see that they are).
In a way you’re preempting the workshop where we would uncover that.
When participating in an outside competition you should try to find out what scoring system the judges use to evaluate the images. Established organizations certainly have adopted some sort of accepted scoring system with at least 3 judges.
Let’s say you have a total of 10 points for each image. The scoring might go something like this:
1 - Impact: the instant wow factor
2- Composition:
3 - Technical: (focus, exposure, depth of field, colour balance, perspective distortion, etc.)
2 - Creative expression: creative interpretation, fresh perspective, Lighting, etc.
2 - Theme: how well the image fits the theme.
And there could be any number of other criterion the , like: Subject matter. Commercial potential, universal appeal, humour, etc.
__ Total
So the judges look at the image and evaluate “Impact” does it have it or not. If it does you get the point. Your quiet misty scene may be beautiful but might not score on Impact.
Next they evaluate the composition. Hmmm, only 1 out of 2 points. The balance isn’t quite right.
Technical: Focus is a bit soft but everything else is OK, 2 out of 3 points.
And so on. All written down on score cards. Anytime one judges score deviates noticeably from the others they are called upon to explain why.
Of course if the competition category is portrait photography the points categories would include expression, pose, etc. Each different type of competition would have it’s own points categories.
So you can see that knowing the scoring system helps you a lot in deciding how well your picture might do in the competition.
When you know 3 points are awarded to technical concerns you wouldn’t bother submitting a picture that had many good points but had technical weakness, such as burned out highlights. The judge has to be able to put their own preferences aside and be impartial. They should be able to say, I really don’t like this picture but it should be the winner.