The judging session I want to talk about was the Science & Natural History singles category. I was there for the entirety of the judging for this category and had some strong opinions about the outcome of the judging.
This is always my favorite category because I would like to eventually shoot Science/Nat. History stories, so I rarely miss the judging, but usually I’m happier with the outcome.
I remember the final round of this category. There were some amazing photographs that I felt really fit the category. I was happy with the judges’ decisions and knew the way the judging should proceed, but then they started picking the photos which I thought would for sure be voted out before the Award of Excellence voting.
The selections made for the judges’ top 3 were photos I thought could have probably been voted out, maybe receiving Awards of Excellence, but definitely not my winners. The photo I have a problem with in particular is the photo of the space suit.
The photo is beautifully toned and powerful considering the content, however, I feel like anyone with a DSLR could’ve taken the same photo. It didn’t take months of planning and research, or bravery on the part of the photographer. There were amazing underwater shots that must’ve taken the photographer months of scouting to find, but those got voted out. So, I thought it was kind of ridiculous that they picked a simple overhead of a space suit, possibly shot on Aperture priority or even full Auto settings and boosted in post.
This is just a matter of preference, and I know this doesn’t affect the quality of a photo, but I was also a little thrown off that they selected three verticals for their winners. When I think Science/Nat. History, I think Nat. Geo., Joel Sartore, Nick Nichols. I want to see beautiful photos from far corners of the world, shot in a traditional horizontal orientation. I love horizontals, and National Geographic has a lot to do with that. Verticals are for portraits, not night landscapes and shuttle launches, but again, that’s only my opinion.
The next category I would like to talk about was one that had a lot of arguments between judges, feature picture story. The two old hats fought hard and strong for the black and white stories, and they ended up winning. This wasn’t the best outcome for me because I agreed with Emilio, who argued that black and white has become a cheap trick to hide bad color and add artificial mood to the photos. He said that a photographer needs to be able to shoot a good story, and handle color, because this is modern photojournalism and our cameras shoot in color. I mean, I love black and white, but I agree with Emilio, color is the format of today and people should stop taking a shortcut by converting their ugly light photos to black and white.
The hog story was really strong, I loved it. Also the racing story was worth mentioning. They were both such strong stories, but I also have no idea how they would’ve looked in color because the photographers chose to take the B/W road. The hog story would have been especially nice in color, with that detail of the blood-soaked knife, some nice soft, slightly desaturated toning on the knife and background would’ve really made the red blood pop and given the photo a lot more power in my opinion.
The color vs. black and white argument continued into the Photographer of the Year/Newspaper category, but this time color seemed to prevail, with only the photographer from Jasper who shot the hog story winning third for the black and white team. I was happy about this outcome, and agreed completely with the judges’ selections.
