February 22, 2024 • 26 mins
Yay! Other than a crappy cold, a very good week. Won a Gold Bar with the Guild Of Photographers a couple of days ago which got me to thinking about competitions: why we do them, how to do them and the fear of failure (when in fact, the only failure is to not enter at all!)
There are one or two other things to bear in mind and I step through them in the podcast.
Enjoy!
Cheers P.
If you enjoy this podcast, please head over to Mastering Portrait Photography, for more articles and videos about this beautiful industry. You can also read a full transcript of this episode.
PLEASE also subscribe and leave us a review - we'd love to hear what you think!
If there are any topics, you would like to hear, have questions we could answer or would like to come and be interviewed on the podcast, please contact me at paul@paulwilkinsonphotography.co.uk.
Full Transcript:
[00:00:00] I'm really sorry, it's just been one of those weeks. I have spent three days, three whole days at home feeling ill and mostly grumpy. Sorry, I don't take to being poorly particularly well. Whatever Michelle and Sarah had last week. Of course, I inherited it this week. It turns out that the word viral is not a joke.
[00:00:25] It's just a cold, really, but it's been quite a horrible one. It hit my chest straight away, and I just felt awful, and if I'm honest, after three days off work this evening is the first time I've really felt sort of compos mentis. I've spent three days sitting in the lounge with the fire on. It's been cozy enough, but I've, I hate being unproductive.
[00:00:46] I hate not getting through the lists that I've got to do. I hate the idea that I've wasted three days, but in the end, that had to be done. So as I sit here next to the fire watching back to back episodes of Law Order, I'm Paul, and this is the Mastering Portrait Photography Podcast.
[00:01:07]
[00:01:20] So I hope you're all feeling a little bit better than me, and in terms of the catch up of the week, well, I can't really say that I've done that much out of the seven days or so. Three of them have been spent laid up doing very little. Obviously, I'm still doing some coding, writing emails, and an awful lot of judging has been flowing through my world. Not this time, not just as a judge or as a chair of judges but also as a contestant. It's been an interesting time.
[00:01:47] So, I judged for the FEP this week, the first of the final rounds of their annual image competition. I'm one of the judges on the portrait category.
[00:01:58] 647 images, I think, were there to judge. And if you think about that as a volume of judging and all of our, all of the judges. Whether it's for the BIP that I chair for, whether it's for the SWPP, the Societies, whether it's for the Guild, whether it's for the FEP, the World Cup, it doesn't really matter what the judging is.
[00:02:19] It takes time and we do it for nothing. Well, I say nothing. We don't do it for nothing, but we do it for free. And so, if you think about all of that, 647 images. If I went at it hell for leather and judged one image per minute with no breaks, that's still basically 11 hours of judging, which is an awful lot when you think about it.
[00:02:45] And yet, we put ourselves through it. And I do it because I really enjoy it. I really love the process, I love seeing the images, though there is some disappointment when we're judging and the images haven't come up to standard. But, nonetheless, it's cathartic, it's inspiring, it's very therapeutic, it's quite a rhythmical sort of thing to do.
[00:03:04] And I really love it.
[00:03:06] On top of that, if that wasn't enough, the results to the BIPP monthlies came out the first BIPP monthly round. So this is a new competition for us. We've s
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
I'm really sorry, it's justbeen one of those weeks.
(00:03):
I have spent three days, three whole daysat home feeling ill and mostly grumpy.
Sorry, I don't take to beingpoorly particularly well.
Whatever Michelle and Sarah had last week.
Of course, I inherited it this week.
It turns out that theword viral is not a joke.
(00:25):
It's just a cold, really, butit's been quite a horrible one.
It hit my chest straight away,and I just felt awful, and if I'm
honest, after three days off workthis evening is the first time I've
really felt sort of compos mentis.
I've spent three days sittingin the lounge with the fire on.
It's been cozy enough, butI've, I hate being unproductive.
(00:46):
I hate not getting throughthe lists that I've got to do.
I hate the idea that I've wasted threedays, but in the end, that had to be done.
So as I sit here next to the firewatching back to back episodes of
Law Order, I'm Paul, and this is theMastering Portrait Photography Podcast.
(01:21):
So I hope you're all feeling a littlebit better than me, and in terms of
the catch up of the week, well, Ican't really say that I've done that
much out of the seven days or so.
Three of them have been spentlaid up doing very little.
Obviously, I'm still doing some coding,writing emails, and an awful lot of
judging has been flowing through my world.
Not this time, not just as a judge or as achair of judges but also as a contestant.
(01:46):
It's been an interesting time.
So, I judged for the FEP this week,the first of the final rounds of
their annual image competition.
I'm one of the judges onthe portrait category.
647 images, I think, were there to judge.
And if you think about that as a volume ofjudging and all of our, all of the judges.
(02:07):
Whether it's for the BIP that I chair for,whether it's for the SWPP, the Societies,
whether it's for the Guild, whether it'sfor the FEP, the World Cup, it doesn't
really matter what the judging is.
It takes time and we do it for nothing.
Well, I say nothing.
We don't do it for nothing,but we do it for free.
And so, if you think aboutall of that, 647 images.
(02:32):
If I went at it hell for leatherand judged one image per minute with
no breaks, that's still basically11 hours of judging, which is an
awful lot when you think about it.
And yet, we put ourselves through it.
And I do it because I really enjoy it.
I really love the process, I loveseeing the images, though there is some
(02:53):
disappointment when we're judging andthe images haven't come up to standard.
But, nonetheless, it's cathartic, it'sinspiring, it's very therapeutic, it's
quite a rhythmical sort of thing to do.
And I really love it.
On top of that, if that wasn't enough,the results to the BIPP monthlies
came out the first BIPP monthly round.
(03:14):
So this is a new competition for us.
We've set it up to run parallel to theprint competition, which opens up in sort
of June time and it's judged in September.
And they run side by side andthey are different beasts.
So the print competition,exactly what it says on the tin.
Submit your prints in the category.
Best print wins each category.
(03:35):
That's it.
Very simple to do.
The monthlies are not that.
The monthlies have been designed.
to reward consistency as much asreally high quality inspirational work.
With a print competition, you only needto shoot one image, and depending on what
everybody else shoots, you could end upwith the title of the print image of the
(03:56):
year, the portrait print of the year, thewedding print of the year, whatever it is.
With the monthlies, it's beendesigned not to be quite like that.
The monthlies It's aboutconsistency more than it is about
that one high scoring image.
That's not to say that a high scoringimage isn't a thing to be treasured
and will get its accolades, but whatwe've done is design a competition
(04:20):
at the BIPP, which is Sorry, the BIPPis the B I P P, the British Institute
of Professional Photographers.
So we've designed a competitionthat runs for 10 months of the year.
And we take, for everyphotographer, the top scoring
image of theirs in each category.
So it doesn't matter how many imagesyou, you enter, that's irrelevant.
(04:41):
Each month, we're going to take, forthat photographer and each category
they've entered, their top scoring image.
And over seven of the ten months,we're going to accumulate those scores.
So you have the opportunity, ifyou wish, to take three months off.
So you have ten months, take threemonths off if you wish, seven months.
So your top seven scores for eachcategory will be accumulated.
(05:05):
So your top seven scoresin portraits per month.
So in January Portrait.
You enter five, we take the top one.
February.
You enter five in Portraitsagain, we still take the top one.
And that's, that's twoof your scores sorted.
And the reason we're doing it thatway is that each photographer in the
BIPP gets one free entry every month.
(05:28):
So you have for free the ability to enterand win the monthly's competition for the
year without laying out a single cent.
All you have to do is find thetime at the end of every month to
pop in a high quality competitionlevel image, upload it, put your
name in, Bob's your uncle, Fanny'syour aunt, off you go, you're done.
And you could win it.
(05:48):
So what amazes me, and there's apoint to this story, not only is
this how it works, but the pointis, why don't more people enter?
We had lots of entries, but it's noteverybody, and I can never quite get
my head around why, if it's free, andyou have the opportunity to create
some great PR, I'm looking at thePR on Facebook this week, and on
various websites and Instagram, andpeople are really celebrating their
(06:10):
success in all of the monthlies, notjust the BIPs, and it's brilliant,
and that's what it's designed for.
It's designed to give photographersthe opportunity to have something to
celebrate and to share with their clients.
This is, in the end, about clients.
I think too often in the industry wethink about it as being about, it's
about photographers, and it's not really.
(06:31):
It's about our clients.
And the monthlies create every 30 days orso, the opportunity to share success with
your clients and you can do it for free.
So why, with the thousands ofmembers do we have, do we not
have every photographer entering?
Still can't get my head aroundthat and if you think I don't
(06:52):
put my money where my mouth is.
This month, I did enter as I havedone for the past year, I entered
the Guild Monthlies competition.
Obviously, I can't enter theBIPP competition, because
I'm chairing the judging.
So I entered the Guild, and thismonth, for the first time since I've
been entering it, I got a gold bar,which is nearly the top standard.
It's not the top standard.
(07:12):
The top standard is Platinum.
But nobody's won a Platinumyet, so I'm happy with that.
I got a gold and wonan image of the month.
Now, that's not the point of this story.
It's not really to brag.
Though I am really pleased withmyself because it's an image I
took of I think it's the bassplayer from the band The Sweet.
He was very cool.
He was in our studio.
(07:32):
It was just a normalsession shot I took for him.
all for the band.
And I decided to try it, enter itas a competition, and see how we go.
I think the point is that I entered.
I gave it a go.
Now, people get really nervousabout entering competitions, and
I don't really understand why.
Now, you know my views on this.
(07:53):
Competitions are not the best wayto hone your skills, because you get
no feedback, and even if you producethe best image of your life If your
competitor has produced the best imageof their life, they may just win.
and give you nothing really, no,certainly no winning image to celebrate.
Also, you know, with the judging process,you don't know how you're going to do.
(08:17):
Every photographer enters an imagethinking they stand a chance.
But judging is what it is.
We've got to rank all ofthe images and who knows?
Maybe it doesn't do aswell as you'd expect.
And people take that really personally.
I take it really personally.
But the difference is I still do it.
I just don't tell anybody I'm doing it.
I do it quietly.
(08:38):
And the images that succeed, well, Icelebrate those and we publish them.
And Sarah in particular loves it becauseit gives her an opportunity to talk
to our clients and put out some PR.
And she's been doing that allday since the result came out
yesterday, which is fantastic.
So, I give it a go, I do it.
I don't always do that well, if I'mhonest, and judges typically, they, there
(09:00):
is a correlation between the judges andsuccess in competitions, but it's nowhere
near as marked as you'd think it is.
And you can see this while we're judging.
So if I'm chairing a panel ofjudges, you'll see marks from
each judge fluctuate quite widely.
So a challenge is triggeredwhen one judge's mark is 10
away from the average decision.
(09:22):
So whatever the judges came up with,we take the average, and if one or
more of those judges is 10 marksdifferent, we have a challenge.
And we have plenty of challenges,which tells you quite a lot about the
fact that every judge has things thatthey are looking for, and if the image
that is in front of them doesn't haveit, they won't score it as highly.
Equally, if it does have thosethings, they will score it highly.
(09:44):
There is volatility in scoring.
You cannot use printor image competitions.
as a measure of you as a person, oryou as a business, you as a creative,
but when you do win, celebrate it.
When you don't win, well, you haveto figure out what to do with that.
The great thing about a monthlycompetition is that there is
(10:07):
the opportunity for at leasta little bit of learning.
because you don't have towait for a year to try again,
you can just wait four weeks.
Re enter some more images, keep aneye on what comes back, what gets
into the bronze, silver or gold.
If you haven't quite made itacross the line, what makes it
into the the commended, whichis what we have at the BIP.
I don't know what the other societiesdo for those things, but everybody
(10:29):
has a sort of way of doing it.
So the trick is, celebrate your wins, keepyour losses to yourself, and then there's
a whole load of pressure removed for you.
So It is slightly differentin in the monthlies.
So, back on, I'm gonna bang on this drum.
If you haven't entered intoone of the monthlies, into any
(10:49):
association you're part of, why not?
What's stopping you?
Think about it.
What is actually stopping you?
It's almost certain, almost certainlyrather, a fear of not doing well.
Well, I enter them every month, Itell you when I've done well, and I
keep it very quiet when I haven't.
And I'm still amazed athow few people do it.
(11:11):
And with the BIPP, every entry is£5, but you get one entry for free.
And with the BIP, every image is £5 a go.
But you get one for free.
So that's a value of £5.
So if you had entered 10 months of theyear, that's £50 worth of free entries.
Who's going to turn down50 quid over the year?
And the value of the opportunity totalk to your clients is priceless.
(11:35):
Now you can argue you mightnot win, and that's true.
I don't.
But when I do do well, I will share it.
When I don't do well, quiet.
I just keep it nice and quiet.
So the results came out for the Guildyesterday, so they're on the 21st,
and the closing date for the Guildis at the end of the month, so it's
a leap year, so it's the 29th of Feb.
(11:56):
So I've got about somewhere between 8, 9,10 days every month between the results to
the previous month coming out and the newround to choose what I'm going to put in.
I know I'll keep entering and I knowI'll keep learning and I will keep
being surprised at what does well andwhat doesn't even though as a judge and
as a chair of judges very often I'm inthe position of determining that and
(12:17):
even having just judged the portraitgroup for the FEP, the Federation of
European Photographers, I can tell younow when the second round comes back
to me in a couple of weeks I lay a bet.
The images that come back will not bein the same order as I pick them out.
That's life.
I'm working with judges from all overEurope, I'm working with people of
(12:38):
different tastes, different influences,different things they value in an image.
So you can never be certain, but whatyou can be certain of is if you don't
enter it, you ain't gonna win anything.
That's a dead cert.
So why would I choose absolutecertain failure over anything else?
Sorry, you never use the word failure.
It's not a failure.
(12:58):
Nobody fails.
Except when you don't enter.
Yes, you do.
You fail.
You've failed to enter, you've failedto compete, in which case, failure
is the only word I have for it.
If you enter and your image isn'tsuccessful this time around,
there's a million factors to that.
You can learn from some, you might notlearn as much as you'd like, you can
take those images because you have them.
And you can show your mentor, or showa friend, or show another photographer,
(13:19):
or show someone get a critique.
So there's just a few things I havespotted over the past week to ten days.
with competition images.
This is accumulated from what I've seenon the judging side with the BIPP, or
the BIPP Monthlies, and what I've seenfrom the competitor side, so as a judge
rather than as a chair, on the FEP.
(13:41):
One, don't over sharpen, particularlywhen it's an online entry.
The screens tend to be quite sharp.
They tend to make things look alittle bit sharper than perhaps they
could be, in my opinion, anyway,maybe it's the screens I've got.
So don't over sharpen.
No one on any competition I have everbeen involved in the judging has ever
(14:02):
said they've under sharpened this image.
But every round I will hear someonesay, that image is over sharpened.
Don't overdo it.
Alongside that There's a huge temptation,particularly with the users of Lightroom
to use clarity and or detail enhancement.
These are still, so there'sno such thing as sharpening,
(14:22):
it's just localized contrast.
Equally, clarity and detail arevariations of the same thing.
If you're quite keen on the clarityslider You can see it in the image.
It starts to look like it'sbeen heavily processed.
For some categories, that's great.
For some categories, thatwill get hugely rewarded.
For others, it won't.
So have a look at what's done wellpreviously and tune your effects and
(14:46):
your clarity and detail to suit that.
Don't blow out your highlightsor block up your shadows.
What do I mean by that?
I don't want ever to see pure white,and that's tricky if you've got, let's
say, a grey flat sky, and you've litsomeone against what light there is.
So get it under control, make surethere's detail in the highlights,
(15:06):
and there is detail in the blacks.
And don't think you can cheat byraising up the blacks to be grey.
Thinking, well that's right,nothing in the image is now black.
If there's no detail in it, we'restill going to see that the blacks were
blocked up, they've now just becomevery dark grey, and still blocked up.
If there's no detail in there, I wouldsuggest you find an alternative image.
(15:32):
Colour grading.
A lot of colour grading knockingaround, and there are a thousand
colour panels out there at the moment.
Be careful, that the colouryou're using is part of the
story you're trying to tell.
Don't just make it desaturatedbecause it's desaturated, or make
the shadows a bluey green becauseyou've seen it on a Netflix film.
Tell the story with your colour.
(15:52):
If you're going to use colour,tell the story through it.
Be careful that you don't justprocess for processing's sake.
It must be part of the storytelling.
If this podcast makes you feeluncomfortable because I'm sounding
ill, trust me it's worse for me.
I'm sounding ill.
Where are we?
Next one, number five, look foremotion, and then number six, impact.
(16:13):
These two are intertwined.
When you look at an image as ajudge, we have to react to it.
Judging as a process gets criticiseda lot as to why don't we prioritise
creativity, emotion, impact, these words.
Sort of soft, the soft skills,I suppose, of photography.
(16:34):
The truth is, we do.
That is the top scoring band.
Impact.
Bam!
Get it in front of us.
Work out what it is about the image.
Whether it's the way you've croppedand formed the story, where you've
laid out the parts of the puzzle,where you've used colour, the way
an expression just connects withyou as a viewer, whatever it is.
Make it about impact, because asjudges, we want to feel something.
(16:59):
We want to know that you felt it, too.
Number seven, do not enterthe same images everywhere.
I kid you not, there's an imageI've judged I won't say exactly
where, but I've judged it thisweek that I've seen now four times.
Four different competitions,I've seen the same image.
I wasn't always the judge.
(17:20):
I was a fellow contestant in one.
I was Chair of Judges fortwo, and Judge for the fourth.
I've seen it four times.
Well, imagine the lack of impactby seeing it that many times.
Now I know, as a contestant,you may not think the same judge
is gonna see it every time.
(17:40):
But, the truth is, there aren'tactually that many judges.
Not really.
So there's a lot of cross talk.
So you get to see the same imagesquite a bit, if you're entering
them into different competitions.
As an extension of that, and this isSo the first one's not that easy to
(18:00):
avoid if you enter lots of competitions.
It would be great if you could, prepa different image from the shoot for
each competition, but I know it takestime and it's expensive if you're doing
print, but I would still recommend it.
This next one, though,is slightly different.
If you shoot images in series,what do I mean by that?
If you shoot dogs running and jumping,one dog running and jumping, or you shoot
(18:22):
a certain style of child portraiture,or a certain style of I'm talking
portraiture in particular, a certainstyle of female portraiture, I don't know.
Don't put more than one of that style intoany round of a competition at one time.
Don't put them all in January.
The idea that we're going to pick outthe highest scoring image, the image we
(18:43):
think is best out of your series of five,simply not true, because we judge them
in a randomised order, but sequentially.
We get an image, we judge it,we move on to the next image,
we move on to the next image.
So you have no control overwhat order we see them in.
We have no control overwhat order we see them in.
And the idea that we're going to go tothe last image of a set of five, and
(19:04):
could you know I've seen all of these?
I think image one was thestrongest, I should have given
that more, more higher score.
That's not how this works.
We evaluate each image based on itsown merits at that point in time.
But if we then see four more of thesame image, trust me, the impact
on the last image isn't goingto be as great, even though they
are technically different images.
(19:26):
So what you're doing is you're sacrificingfour incredible images to get one through.
You have to make a decisionover which one to put in.
And then, guess what?
February?
Put another one in.
March?
Another one.
There's no way, it's not a, it'snot a thing where we can pick
images out, because we have to judgethem one after the other, so that
every single image stands the samechance of getting the same score.
(19:51):
That's why we do it.
And number nine, so another point on thejudging, is don't forget to finish your
images, each and every one of them, fully.
So there's an image during therecent judging I did, stunning.
I looked at it on thescreen, small, beautiful.
Hit the 100 percent button, zoomed intothe pixels, moved around the image,
(20:12):
because when you're doing online judging,this is how it works, and you could see
that the photographer, it looked like,I don't know, their nan had called round
midway through them doing the retouch.
And they just neverwent back to that image.
They submitted it with holes in thebackground and gaps where They'd dropped a
background in over the top of the subject,and you could see the overlaps so clearly.
(20:34):
They were just hard, like they'd hit itwith the pencil tool, not the brush tool.
And it clearly, all they'ddone is not gone back over the
image with a fine tooth comb.
It really, it felt like, they're sittingthere doing this beautiful retouch.
It's a beautiful lady, she's gotflowing hair, the background's nailed.
She's resting on a bench,or whatever it was.
And then bing bong.
(20:55):
Mom's here.
Mom.
It's your mom, Paul.
It's your mom.
Come down.
Alright, I'll be down.
I'll be down in a minute.
No, now.
All right, I'll come down now.
And that was the end of it.
It's as if I went back to the imageand just never picked it up again.
I must have hit send or something.
This is not my image, by the way.
I really felt for the creator ofit, because it was a stunning image.
And I even put, it's one ofthe rare times I've put in the
(21:16):
comments field when I'm judging.
If the judge is surprised at whyI've classed this as not competition
standard, when clearly it's stunning.
Clearly the photographerknows their craft.
Please get them to look at itlike I did and see the holes
they've left in the retouch.
So finish them properly.
(21:38):
So don't do that.
So those are the things I'venoticed this time round.
And the great thing about enteringa competition is it gives you
an opportunity to experiment.
Experiment in January.
If it doesn't work, change the experiment.
Or, no, you never change the experiment.
You experiment.
That's not how it works.
Experiment in January.
Change what you try.
in February.
It's the same experiment.
And then March.
(21:59):
And then, who knows, by June, youmight have got the swing of it.
Who knows?
What I will say, though, is that thisability every month to have a go, see
how you do, celebrate your successes,learn from those that aren't quite so
successful, is hugely, hugely powerful.
I still, still don't thinkcompetitions are mentoring.
(22:20):
They are different beasts.
You know my views on that.
But there is still somethingto be learned from.
Entering a competition monthly.
And the best way of enteringmonthlies, or any competition
really, is if you are organized.
Then spend time with your images.
Print them, hang them up, look atthem over time, keep an eye on them.
Because if you do that You'llget to see those little niggles,
(22:44):
you'll get to appreciate wherethings could be fine tuned.
On the other hand, if you're like me,and it's all a little bit last second,
then just make sure when you do the prepfor your client, you're always producing
images at sort of competition level.
There is a difference between competitionimagery, what we would choose, how
(23:04):
we'd finish them, and there is withwhat we produce for our clients.
But for me, that gap isn't that great.
I think if you're a fashionphotographer, there's almost no gap.
If you're, one of the Fearless WeddingPhotographers, there's almost no gap.
I think there is for manysectors in the industry though.
So just make sure you'reprepping your images essentially
to competition standard.
(23:25):
If that image that I talked about earlierhad gone out to a client, the client
would have sent it back to me laughing.
I'd have had to sort it out.
And it did happen to me once.
It wasn't my retouch, but I did see it.
It was my image someone on at thetime, an assistant had retouched it,
and I knew the minute I saw it go out,it's like, that's coming back to me.
And I knew because she'd overwhitened the floor, and it looked
(23:47):
like the object was floating.
I don't do that kind of photographyvery much, but when I do, it has
to be right, and it wasn't right,and it's really frustrating.
Do it to the best that you can.
Get it to competition standard, oras close as you can, with only just
a little additional finishing whererequired, because that way, I don't
need to worry about having tons oftime to get it into a competition.
(24:09):
The image I entered and got my gold barwas not the one I thought would do well.
I just didn't think necessarilyof the set that I entered,
it was the strongest image.
Turned out the judges felt differently.
But it was certainly finished tothat level because the band could
have been using it on a poster.
So, the same criteria is still applied.
There's no jeopardy in entering.
The worst that can happen is thatyou don't do as well as you'd hope.
(24:32):
And that happens to all of us.
The gold bar this month?
It's the first one I've attained withthe guild, and it's just a regular image.
It's now out, of course, on social media.
Sarah's celebrating it everywhere.
I'm a little slower toget it onto social media.
But it gives me an interestingtopic to talk about on here.
And so the question I supposeyou're asking is, how many
other images did I enter?
(24:54):
I don't know how the other imagesdid, I've only won one gold bar
and got it one image of the month.
But I can't argue that youcan do this anonymously and
then, for me, not be anonymous.
So I'm not going to tell you howmany other images I entered, but
it's definitely more than one.
And so why not make this, this year,the year you'll give it a shot.
(25:16):
If you're part of the BIPP, you've onlymissed one month, you still have plenty
of months ahead of you, there's ninemore to go, deadline always at the end
of the month, images, image resultscome out on the 15th, to give you time
to reassess and figure out what you'regoing to enter for the next month.
And you never know what might happen.
And if you can do it for free, and thisis particularly to the BIPP, if you
(25:38):
can do it for free, Then we really, andI mean this, this isn't a figurative
thing, you have nothing to lose.
It's free.
The clue is in the title.
And on that happy note, I'm going to doseup on some Lemsip, some Benelin, some
Nurofen, and I'm going to call it a night.
Thank you for listening as I sit here inmy cosy little lounge to this podcast.
(26:00):
As always, head over tomasteringportraitphotography.
com for lots of articlesand stuff, and also it's the
spiritual home of this podcast.
On top of that Please do leave usa review, tell another photographer
or someone you might think wouldbe interested in it about the
podcast, leave us some commentswherever you can, and hit subscribe
on whatever podcast player you use.
(26:21):
That way, as soon as I get round toreleasing an episode, there it is right
in your ears before you even know it.
Whatever else, as I sip my Lemsip,keep warm and be kind to yourself.
Take care.
I'm really sorry, it's justbeen one of those weeks.
(00:03):
I have spent three days, three whole daysat home feeling ill and mostly grumpy.
Sorry, I don't take to beingpoorly particularly well.
Whatever Michelle and Sarah had last week.
Of course, I inherited it this week.
It turns out that theword viral is not a joke.
(00:25):
It's just a cold, really, butit's been quite a horrible one.
It hit my chest straight away,and I just felt awful, and if I'm
honest, after three days off workthis evening is the first time I've
really felt sort of compos mentis.
I've spent three days sittingin the lounge with the fire on.
It's been cozy enough, butI've, I hate being unproductive.
(00:46):
I hate not getting throughthe lists that I've got to do.
I hate the idea that I've wasted threedays, but in the end, that had to be done.
So as I sit here next to the firewatching back to back episodes of
Law Order, I'm Paul, and this is theMastering Portrait Photography Podcast.
(01:21):
So I hope you're all feeling a littlebit better than me, and in terms of
the catch up of the week, well, Ican't really say that I've done that
much out of the seven days or so.
Three of them have been spentlaid up doing very little.
Obviously, I'm still doing some coding,writing emails, and an awful lot of
judging has been flowing through my world.
Not this time, not just as a judge or as achair of judges but also as a contestant.
(01:46):
It's been an interesting time.
So, I judged for the FEP this week,the first of the final rounds of
their annual image competition.
I'm one of the judges onthe portrait category.
647 images, I think, were there to judge.
And if you think about that as a volume ofjudging and all of our, all of the judges.
(02:07):
Whether it's for the BIP that I chair for,whether it's for the SWPP, the Societies,
whether it's for the Guild, whether it'sfor the FEP, the World Cup, it doesn't
really matter what the judging is.
It takes time and we do it for nothing.
Well, I say nothing.
We don't do it for nothing,but we do it for free.
And so, if you think aboutall of that, 647 images.
(02:32):
If I went at it hell for leatherand judged one image per minute with
no breaks, that's still basically11 hours of judging, which is an
awful lot when you think about it.
And yet, we put ourselves through it.
And I do it because I really enjoy it.
I really love the process, I loveseeing the images, though there is some
(02:53):
disappointment when we're judging andthe images haven't come up to standard.
But, nonetheless, it's cathartic, it'sinspiring, it's very therapeutic, it's
quite a rhythmical sort of thing to do.
And I really love it.
On top of that, if that wasn't enough,the results to the BIPP monthlies
came out the first BIPP monthly round.
(03:14):
So this is a new competition for us.
We've set it up to run parallel to theprint competition, which opens up in sort
of June time and it's judged in September.
And they run side by side andthey are different beasts.
So the print competition,exactly what it says on the tin.
Submit your prints in the category.
Best print wins each category.
(03:35):
That's it.
Very simple to do.
The monthlies are not that.
The monthlies have been designed.
to reward consistency as much asreally high quality inspirational work.
With a print competition, you only needto shoot one image, and depending on what
everybody else shoots, you could end upwith the title of the print image of the
(03:56):
year, the portrait print of the year, thewedding print of the year, whatever it is.
With the monthlies, it's beendesigned not to be quite like that.
The monthlies It's aboutconsistency more than it is about
that one high scoring image.
That's not to say that a high scoringimage isn't a thing to be treasured
and will get its accolades, but whatwe've done is design a competition
(04:20):
at the BIPP, which is Sorry, the BIPPis the B I P P, the British Institute
of Professional Photographers.
So we've designed a competitionthat runs for 10 months of the year.
And we take, for everyphotographer, the top scoring
image of theirs in each category.
So it doesn't matter how many imagesyou, you enter, that's irrelevant.
(04:41):
Each month, we're going to take, forthat photographer and each category
they've entered, their top scoring image.
And over seven of the ten months,we're going to accumulate those scores.
So you have the opportunity, ifyou wish, to take three months off.
So you have ten months, take threemonths off if you wish, seven months.
So your top seven scores for eachcategory will be accumulated.
(05:05):
So your top seven scoresin portraits per month.
So in January Portrait.
You enter five, we take the top one.
February.
You enter five in Portraitsagain, we still take the top one.
And that's, that's twoof your scores sorted.
And the reason we're doing it thatway is that each photographer in the
BIPP gets one free entry every month.
(05:28):
So you have for free the ability to enterand win the monthly's competition for the
year without laying out a single cent.
All you have to do is find thetime at the end of every month to
pop in a high quality competitionlevel image, upload it, put your
name in, Bob's your uncle, Fanny'syour aunt, off you go, you're done.
And you could win it.
(05:48):
So what amazes me, and there's apoint to this story, not only is
this how it works, but the pointis, why don't more people enter?
We had lots of entries, but it's noteverybody, and I can never quite get
my head around why, if it's free, andyou have the opportunity to create
some great PR, I'm looking at thePR on Facebook this week, and on
various websites and Instagram, andpeople are really celebrating their
(06:10):
success in all of the monthlies, notjust the BIPs, and it's brilliant,
and that's what it's designed for.
It's designed to give photographersthe opportunity to have something to
celebrate and to share with their clients.
This is, in the end, about clients.
I think too often in the industry wethink about it as being about, it's
about photographers, and it's not really.
(06:31):
It's about our clients.
And the monthlies create every 30 days orso, the opportunity to share success with
your clients and you can do it for free.
So why, with the thousands ofmembers do we have, do we not
have every photographer entering?
Still can't get my head aroundthat and if you think I don't
(06:52):
put my money where my mouth is.
This month, I did enter as I havedone for the past year, I entered
the Guild Monthlies competition.
Obviously, I can't enter theBIPP competition, because
I'm chairing the judging.
So I entered the Guild, and thismonth, for the first time since I've
been entering it, I got a gold bar,which is nearly the top standard.
It's not the top standard.
(07:12):
The top standard is Platinum.
But nobody's won a Platinumyet, so I'm happy with that.
I got a gold and wonan image of the month.
Now, that's not the point of this story.
It's not really to brag.
Though I am really pleased withmyself because it's an image I
took of I think it's the bassplayer from the band The Sweet.
He was very cool.
He was in our studio.
(07:32):
It was just a normalsession shot I took for him.
all for the band.
And I decided to try it, enter itas a competition, and see how we go.
I think the point is that I entered.
I gave it a go.
Now, people get really nervousabout entering competitions, and
I don't really understand why.
Now, you know my views on this.
(07:53):
Competitions are not the best wayto hone your skills, because you get
no feedback, and even if you producethe best image of your life If your
competitor has produced the best imageof their life, they may just win.
and give you nothing really, no,certainly no winning image to celebrate.
Also, you know, with the judging process,you don't know how you're going to do.
(08:17):
Every photographer enters an imagethinking they stand a chance.
But judging is what it is.
We've got to rank all ofthe images and who knows?
Maybe it doesn't do aswell as you'd expect.
And people take that really personally.
I take it really personally.
But the difference is I still do it.
I just don't tell anybody I'm doing it.
I do it quietly.
(08:38):
And the images that succeed, well, Icelebrate those and we publish them.
And Sarah in particular loves it becauseit gives her an opportunity to talk
to our clients and put out some PR.
And she's been doing that allday since the result came out
yesterday, which is fantastic.
So, I give it a go, I do it.
I don't always do that well, if I'mhonest, and judges typically, they, there
(09:00):
is a correlation between the judges andsuccess in competitions, but it's nowhere
near as marked as you'd think it is.
And you can see this while we're judging.
So if I'm chairing a panel ofjudges, you'll see marks from
each judge fluctuate quite widely.
So a challenge is triggeredwhen one judge's mark is 10
away from the average decision.
(09:22):
So whatever the judges came up with,we take the average, and if one or
more of those judges is 10 marksdifferent, we have a challenge.
And we have plenty of challenges,which tells you quite a lot about the
fact that every judge has things thatthey are looking for, and if the image
that is in front of them doesn't haveit, they won't score it as highly.
Equally, if it does have thosethings, they will score it highly.
(09:44):
There is volatility in scoring.
You cannot use printor image competitions.
as a measure of you as a person, oryou as a business, you as a creative,
but when you do win, celebrate it.
When you don't win, well, you haveto figure out what to do with that.
The great thing about a monthlycompetition is that there is
(10:07):
the opportunity for at leasta little bit of learning.
because you don't have towait for a year to try again,
you can just wait four weeks.
Re enter some more images, keep aneye on what comes back, what gets
into the bronze, silver or gold.
If you haven't quite made itacross the line, what makes it
into the the commended, whichis what we have at the BIP.
I don't know what the other societiesdo for those things, but everybody
(10:29):
has a sort of way of doing it.
So the trick is, celebrate your wins, keepyour losses to yourself, and then there's
a whole load of pressure removed for you.
So It is slightly differentin in the monthlies.
So, back on, I'm gonna bang on this drum.
If you haven't entered intoone of the monthlies, into any
(10:49):
association you're part of, why not?
What's stopping you?
Think about it.
What is actually stopping you?
It's almost certain, almost certainlyrather, a fear of not doing well.
Well, I enter them every month, Itell you when I've done well, and I
keep it very quiet when I haven't.
And I'm still amazed athow few people do it.
(11:11):
And with the BIPP, every entry is£5, but you get one entry for free.
And with the BIP, every image is £5 a go.
But you get one for free.
So that's a value of £5.
So if you had entered 10 months of theyear, that's £50 worth of free entries.
Who's going to turn down50 quid over the year?
And the value of the opportunity totalk to your clients is priceless.
(11:35):
Now you can argue you mightnot win, and that's true.
I don't.
But when I do do well, I will share it.
When I don't do well, quiet.
I just keep it nice and quiet.
So the results came out for the Guildyesterday, so they're on the 21st,
and the closing date for the Guildis at the end of the month, so it's
a leap year, so it's the 29th of Feb.
(11:56):
So I've got about somewhere between 8, 9,10 days every month between the results to
the previous month coming out and the newround to choose what I'm going to put in.
I know I'll keep entering and I knowI'll keep learning and I will keep
being surprised at what does well andwhat doesn't even though as a judge and
as a chair of judges very often I'm inthe position of determining that and
(12:17):
even having just judged the portraitgroup for the FEP, the Federation of
European Photographers, I can tell younow when the second round comes back
to me in a couple of weeks I lay a bet.
The images that come back will not bein the same order as I pick them out.
That's life.
I'm working with judges from all overEurope, I'm working with people of
(12:38):
different tastes, different influences,different things they value in an image.
So you can never be certain, but whatyou can be certain of is if you don't
enter it, you ain't gonna win anything.
That's a dead cert.
So why would I choose absolutecertain failure over anything else?
Sorry, you never use the word failure.
It's not a failure.
(12:58):
Nobody fails.
Except when you don't enter.
Yes, you do.
You fail.
You've failed to enter, you've failedto compete, in which case, failure
is the only word I have for it.
If you enter and your image isn'tsuccessful this time around,
there's a million factors to that.
You can learn from some, you might notlearn as much as you'd like, you can
take those images because you have them.
And you can show your mentor, or showa friend, or show another photographer,
(13:19):
or show someone get a critique.
So there's just a few things I havespotted over the past week to ten days.
with competition images.
This is accumulated from what I've seenon the judging side with the BIPP, or
the BIPP Monthlies, and what I've seenfrom the competitor side, so as a judge
rather than as a chair, on the FEP.
(13:41):
One, don't over sharpen, particularlywhen it's an online entry.
The screens tend to be quite sharp.
They tend to make things look alittle bit sharper than perhaps they
could be, in my opinion, anyway,maybe it's the screens I've got.
So don't over sharpen.
No one on any competition I have everbeen involved in the judging has ever
(14:02):
said they've under sharpened this image.
But every round I will hear someonesay, that image is over sharpened.
Don't overdo it.
Alongside that There's a huge temptation,particularly with the users of Lightroom
to use clarity and or detail enhancement.
These are still, so there'sno such thing as sharpening,
(14:22):
it's just localized contrast.
Equally, clarity and detail arevariations of the same thing.
If you're quite keen on the clarityslider You can see it in the image.
It starts to look like it'sbeen heavily processed.
For some categories, that's great.
For some categories, thatwill get hugely rewarded.
For others, it won't.
So have a look at what's done wellpreviously and tune your effects and
(14:46):
your clarity and detail to suit that.
Don't blow out your highlightsor block up your shadows.
What do I mean by that?
I don't want ever to see pure white,and that's tricky if you've got, let's
say, a grey flat sky, and you've litsomeone against what light there is.
So get it under control, make surethere's detail in the highlights,
(15:06):
and there is detail in the blacks.
And don't think you can cheat byraising up the blacks to be grey.
Thinking, well that's right,nothing in the image is now black.
If there's no detail in it, we'restill going to see that the blacks were
blocked up, they've now just becomevery dark grey, and still blocked up.
If there's no detail in there, I wouldsuggest you find an alternative image.
(15:32):
Colour grading.
A lot of colour grading knockingaround, and there are a thousand
colour panels out there at the moment.
Be careful, that the colouryou're using is part of the
story you're trying to tell.
Don't just make it desaturatedbecause it's desaturated, or make
the shadows a bluey green becauseyou've seen it on a Netflix film.
Tell the story with your colour.
(15:52):
If you're going to use colour,tell the story through it.
Be careful that you don't justprocess for processing's sake.
It must be part of the storytelling.
If this podcast makes you feeluncomfortable because I'm sounding
ill, trust me it's worse for me.
I'm sounding ill.
Where are we?
Next one, number five, look foremotion, and then number six, impact.
(16:13):
These two are intertwined.
When you look at an image as ajudge, we have to react to it.
Judging as a process gets criticiseda lot as to why don't we prioritise
creativity, emotion, impact, these words.
Sort of soft, the soft skills,I suppose, of photography.
(16:34):
The truth is, we do.
That is the top scoring band.
Impact.
Bam!
Get it in front of us.
Work out what it is about the image.
Whether it's the way you've croppedand formed the story, where you've
laid out the parts of the puzzle,where you've used colour, the way
an expression just connects withyou as a viewer, whatever it is.
Make it about impact, because asjudges, we want to feel something.
(16:59):
We want to know that you felt it, too.
Number seven, do not enterthe same images everywhere.
I kid you not, there's an imageI've judged I won't say exactly
where, but I've judged it thisweek that I've seen now four times.
Four different competitions,I've seen the same image.
I wasn't always the judge.
(17:20):
I was a fellow contestant in one.
I was Chair of Judges fortwo, and Judge for the fourth.
I've seen it four times.
Well, imagine the lack of impactby seeing it that many times.
Now I know, as a contestant,you may not think the same judge
is gonna see it every time.
(17:40):
But, the truth is, there aren'tactually that many judges.
Not really.
So there's a lot of cross talk.
So you get to see the same imagesquite a bit, if you're entering
them into different competitions.
As an extension of that, and this isSo the first one's not that easy to
(18:00):
avoid if you enter lots of competitions.
It would be great if you could, prepa different image from the shoot for
each competition, but I know it takestime and it's expensive if you're doing
print, but I would still recommend it.
This next one, though,is slightly different.
If you shoot images in series,what do I mean by that?
If you shoot dogs running and jumping,one dog running and jumping, or you shoot
(18:22):
a certain style of child portraiture,or a certain style of I'm talking
portraiture in particular, a certainstyle of female portraiture, I don't know.
Don't put more than one of that style intoany round of a competition at one time.
Don't put them all in January.
The idea that we're going to pick outthe highest scoring image, the image we
(18:43):
think is best out of your series of five,simply not true, because we judge them
in a randomised order, but sequentially.
We get an image, we judge it,we move on to the next image,
we move on to the next image.
So you have no control overwhat order we see them in.
We have no control overwhat order we see them in.
And the idea that we're going to go tothe last image of a set of five, and
(19:04):
could you know I've seen all of these?
I think image one was thestrongest, I should have given
that more, more higher score.
That's not how this works.
We evaluate each image based on itsown merits at that point in time.
But if we then see four more of thesame image, trust me, the impact
on the last image isn't goingto be as great, even though they
are technically different images.
(19:26):
So what you're doing is you're sacrificingfour incredible images to get one through.
You have to make a decisionover which one to put in.
And then, guess what?
February?
Put another one in.
March?
Another one.
There's no way, it's not a, it'snot a thing where we can pick
images out, because we have to judgethem one after the other, so that
every single image stands the samechance of getting the same score.
(19:51):
That's why we do it.
And number nine, so another point on thejudging, is don't forget to finish your
images, each and every one of them, fully.
So there's an image during therecent judging I did, stunning.
I looked at it on thescreen, small, beautiful.
Hit the 100 percent button, zoomed intothe pixels, moved around the image,
(20:12):
because when you're doing online judging,this is how it works, and you could see
that the photographer, it looked like,I don't know, their nan had called round
midway through them doing the retouch.
And they just neverwent back to that image.
They submitted it with holes in thebackground and gaps where They'd dropped a
background in over the top of the subject,and you could see the overlaps so clearly.
(20:34):
They were just hard, like they'd hit itwith the pencil tool, not the brush tool.
And it clearly, all they'ddone is not gone back over the
image with a fine tooth comb.
It really, it felt like, they're sittingthere doing this beautiful retouch.
It's a beautiful lady, she's gotflowing hair, the background's nailed.
She's resting on a bench,or whatever it was.
And then bing bong.
(20:55):
Mom's here.
Mom.
It's your mom, Paul.
It's your mom.
Come down.
Alright, I'll be down.
I'll be down in a minute.
No, now.
All right, I'll come down now.
And that was the end of it.
It's as if I went back to the imageand just never picked it up again.
I must have hit send or something.
This is not my image, by the way.
I really felt for the creator ofit, because it was a stunning image.
And I even put, it's one ofthe rare times I've put in the
(21:16):
comments field when I'm judging.
If the judge is surprised at whyI've classed this as not competition
standard, when clearly it's stunning.
Clearly the photographerknows their craft.
Please get them to look at itlike I did and see the holes
they've left in the retouch.
So finish them properly.
(21:38):
So don't do that.
So those are the things I'venoticed this time round.
And the great thing about enteringa competition is it gives you
an opportunity to experiment.
Experiment in January.
If it doesn't work, change the experiment.
Or, no, you never change the experiment.
You experiment.
That's not how it works.
Experiment in January.
Change what you try.
in February.
It's the same experiment.
And then March.
(21:59):
And then, who knows, by June, youmight have got the swing of it.
Who knows?
What I will say, though, is that thisability every month to have a go, see
how you do, celebrate your successes,learn from those that aren't quite so
successful, is hugely, hugely powerful.
I still, still don't thinkcompetitions are mentoring.
(22:20):
They are different beasts.
You know my views on that.
But there is still somethingto be learned from.
Entering a competition monthly.
And the best way of enteringmonthlies, or any competition
really, is if you are organized.
Then spend time with your images.
Print them, hang them up, look atthem over time, keep an eye on them.
Because if you do that You'llget to see those little niggles,
(22:44):
you'll get to appreciate wherethings could be fine tuned.
On the other hand, if you're like me,and it's all a little bit last second,
then just make sure when you do the prepfor your client, you're always producing
images at sort of competition level.
There is a difference between competitionimagery, what we would choose, how
(23:04):
we'd finish them, and there is withwhat we produce for our clients.
But for me, that gap isn't that great.
I think if you're a fashionphotographer, there's almost no gap.
If you're, one of the Fearless WeddingPhotographers, there's almost no gap.
I think there is for manysectors in the industry though.
So just make sure you'reprepping your images essentially
to competition standard.
(23:25):
If that image that I talked about earlierhad gone out to a client, the client
would have sent it back to me laughing.
I'd have had to sort it out.
And it did happen to me once.
It wasn't my retouch, but I did see it.
It was my image someone on at thetime, an assistant had retouched it,
and I knew the minute I saw it go out,it's like, that's coming back to me.
And I knew because she'd overwhitened the floor, and it looked
(23:47):
like the object was floating.
I don't do that kind of photographyvery much, but when I do, it has
to be right, and it wasn't right,and it's really frustrating.
Do it to the best that you can.
Get it to competition standard, oras close as you can, with only just
a little additional finishing whererequired, because that way, I don't
need to worry about having tons oftime to get it into a competition.
(24:09):
The image I entered and got my gold barwas not the one I thought would do well.
I just didn't think necessarilyof the set that I entered,
it was the strongest image.
Turned out the judges felt differently.
But it was certainly finished tothat level because the band could
have been using it on a poster.
So, the same criteria is still applied.
There's no jeopardy in entering.
The worst that can happen is thatyou don't do as well as you'd hope.
(24:32):
And that happens to all of us.
The gold bar this month?
It's the first one I've attained withthe guild, and it's just a regular image.
It's now out, of course, on social media.
Sarah's celebrating it everywhere.
I'm a little slower toget it onto social media.
But it gives me an interestingtopic to talk about on here.
And so the question I supposeyou're asking is, how many
other images did I enter?
(24:54):
I don't know how the other imagesdid, I've only won one gold bar
and got it one image of the month.
But I can't argue that youcan do this anonymously and
then, for me, not be anonymous.
So I'm not going to tell you howmany other images I entered, but
it's definitely more than one.
And so why not make this, this year,the year you'll give it a shot.
(25:16):
If you're part of the BIPP, you've onlymissed one month, you still have plenty
of months ahead of you, there's ninemore to go, deadline always at the end
of the month, images, image resultscome out on the 15th, to give you time
to reassess and figure out what you'regoing to enter for the next month.
And you never know what might happen.
And if you can do it for free, and thisis particularly to the BIPP, if you
(25:38):
can do it for free, Then we really, andI mean this, this isn't a figurative
thing, you have nothing to lose.
It's free.
The clue is in the title.
And on that happy note, I'm going to doseup on some Lemsip, some Benelin, some
Nurofen, and I'm going to call it a night.
Thank you for listening as I sit here inmy cosy little lounge to this podcast.
(26:00):
As always, head over tomasteringportraitphotography.
com for lots of articlesand stuff, and also it's the
spiritual home of this podcast.
On top of that Please do leave usa review, tell another photographer
or someone you might think wouldbe interested in it about the
podcast, leave us some commentswherever you can, and hit subscribe
on whatever podcast player you use.
(26:21):
That way, as soon as I get round toreleasing an episode, there it is right
in your ears before you even know it.
Whatever else, as I sip my Lemsip,keep warm and be kind to yourself.
Take care.
Popular Podcasts
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.