Why are awards like buses?

Last weekend was the judging for the Smethwick International exhibition, which was the first ever exhibition I entered two years ago. On my first entry I scraped 1 acceptance with a projected image of a portrait of a man from Gas Street Basin in Birmingham.

The international exhibitions are organised under the auspices of FIAP – Federation Internationale de l’Art Photographique – and each section is judged by three distinguished and experienced judges.
Each judge gives each image a mark between 2 and 5, with 2 obviously meaning very poor, and 5 the top mark they can give.

My projected image entry absolutely bombed with some of my images getting 8 – two judges giving a 3 and 1 judge a 2 – but I had higher hopes for the print sections where it was a different set of judges, and my prints are generally of a better quality than my digital images.

There were around 1000 entries in each of the print categories – monochrome and colour – and around 20% of the images are accepted into the exhibition. Of my 4 monochrome prints 2 were accepted with a score of 12 – each judge giving a good mark of 4. I was very pleased with this, as getting 50% of your images accepted is considered very good going.

I have had over 40 images accepted in exhibitions this year, but I have never won an award, as these are reserved for the best of the accepted images. Amazingly in the colour print section all 4 of my prints were accepted, with 3 of them gaining awards including 1 medal with that image gaining the maximum score of 15 with each judge scoring it 5.

First with a score of 12 we have Raphaella with The Jump, this image was accepted:

Then with a score of 13 we have Joceline with Branches which gained a Highly Commended award:

Then also with a score of 13 we have Raphaella with Golden Angel which also gained a Highly Commended award:

An finally with the first time I have achieved a maximum score of 15 in an international exhibition we have Nanette with Pearls which gained the SPS Members Medal. As a member of Smethwick Photographic Society which organises the exhibition this is the only medal I can be in contention for in my ‘home’ exhibition, so this really is as good as it gets.

So just like buses, you wait ages for an award to come along, and then you get 3 all together. Although I’m definitely not complaining :)

It’s just left to say a big thank you to Joceline, Raphaella and especially Nanette for creating these images with me, and I suspect I will be working with some of you next year to hopefully create more beautiful images.