At first, I was looking forward to taking part in the judging the November Loyalist photojournalism student photo contest. That quickly changed once I had downloaded the entries and starting to view the photos and their captions. Maybe this was just a bad month? I sure hope so, because if what was submitted is a reflection of the best Loyalist College has to offer then all I can say is, “Are you kidding me!!??”
I can honestly say that this was the most frustrating and discouraging judging I have ever taken part in. I started to judge I got frustrated and ticked off enough that I just stopped it and waited a few days to see if I was just in a bad mood that day. Turns out, I was in a fine mood that day because once I started to do the judging again I felt like saying, “screw this.” And just send Mr. Hanley an e-mail to tell him to get another judge! It is no fun to crap all over someone and or a group as a whole, saying and or typing negative comments takes a lot of good energy. I would much rather talk about and type positive things! I am sitting here typing and trying my best to not just do a Bill Grimshaw on every single student that submitted a crappy picture and or unprofessional, incomplete captions with way too many spelling errors. And I am missing a really good NFL playoff game right now!
There were only around ten (10) students taking part in the November contest. This number seems really low to me. Are there not around 90 PJ first and second year students at Loyalist right now? One tip, out of sight in this business does mean out of mind to an editor when there is a job opening. While there are some good pictures and some good captions submitted overall, what I was given to judge is nothing short of embarrassing too many students and the photojournalism program itself! Please tell me that students get a major grade drop and or even better an automatic ZERO on assignments for unprofessional and or lacking simple 5-W captions, with names.
Here are some of the things that are pushing my button and making me seriously think about skipping this year’s portfolio review in April if I can actually get to this year’s NPAC.ca conference in April.
➢ The Feature category had 11 photos submitted. Only two (2) pictures actually had names in them! Are you kidding me? Nine (9) photos with no names! In that group of 11 pictures there was a boring overall shot with no person to ID and there was couple of group sports pictures with no names, they should have been entered into the Sports category after reading the rules; www.loyalistphotocontest2008.blogspot.com. The rules also state that the judges can not or will not move pictures into their proper category. Out of the 11 photos, there were six (6) photos that had people in the foreground or the main feature of the photo and the photographer has NO NAME in the caption! Seriously, are you kidding me! Students need to ask themselves right now, do you want to become an unemployed picture taker with big student loans or do you want to become a paid photojournalist that practises basic and must do things, LIKE GETTING NAMES! I am requesting that all 11-feature pictures with the supplied captions are posted on the contest web site. You can take the names of the photographers off to protect the guilty if you want but I would really like to see all of the pictures with all untouched captions posted. If people can learn from this, then it will not be a total waste of time. There was just way to many spelling errors and incomplete captions overall. If students do not have a spell checker in their computer then they can easily use Gmail or Hotmail as they both have spell checkers when composing a new e-mail. Run a spell check and then just copy and paste the corrected caption into the File Info. **Warning** Note, make sure the spell checker is set to the Canadian dictionary and not the American dictionary as you will make a lot of caption errors if you use the American dictionary. If you do use an American dictionary spell checker pay close attention to the words that need the proper Canadian spelling like, honour not honor.
Here are some of the bad captions I am taking about;
➢ Four spelling errors; “A” instead of “An”, “exhubrant”, “cymbols” and “vistor's”. And no name for the person that is the main subject of the picture. Are you kidding me?
BELLEVILLE, ON - A exhubrant fan crashes his cymbols after his home team scores at the Yardmen Arena in Belleville, Ontario. Known to sit in the vistor's section, the cymbalist wears a different outfit to every game.
➢ Captions below. This is a classic copy and paste mistake where there is a spelling error “fot” which gets repeated in more than one caption. When copy and pasting make sure, your caption is clean! In addition, the biggest problem with these two photos is that there are two kids featured in one photo playing with light sabres, NO NAMES!! And the other picture has a single young kid, in the foreground, with a light sabre and NO NAME!! If a student comes here to work and comes back with that kind of lack of caption info; then that is simply strike #1 and strike #2. The student would be told if they come back the second day with the same lack of simple and basic caption info then that would be their last day of their internship. Good-bye, Hasta la vista etc etc.
Belleville, ON: Children play on the sidewalk while waiting fot the start of the 2008 Belleville Night Christmas Parade.
Belleville, ON: Children play on the sidewalk while waiting fot the start of the 2008 Belleville Night Christmas Parade.”
➢ The caption below is for a pretty uneventful photo taken at a dress rehearsal, even with the subject being back against the camera, there should be A NAME!! In this day and age of digital cameras where a photographer can make a rough edit and use the screen to show people the photo to get names there is absolutely NO excuse for not having a name.
November 13, 2008 - Dancers from the Quinte Ballet School take a break on stage at the Empire Theatre during dress rehearsal for their upcoming performance of "The Nutcracker
➢ The caption below is for a decent photo taken at the same dress rehearsal. The photo could have been a bit better with a different angle but still a good found moment. “performace” is spelt wrong. And more importantly, WHY NO NAME!!?? How does the photographer know if the person is doing their “homework”, must of talked to the subject? If by chance a subject says, “I refuse to give my name” then that info HAS to be included in the caption submitted without fail.
November 11, 2008-A member of the Quinte Ballet School finishes homework during a dress rehearsal for the school's upcoming performace of "The Nutcracker".
➢ It is not just the feature pictures that lacked good captions. Here is a caption for a news photo quote, “Stephen Harper along with his wife lay a wreath” Really wife? What is her name!!?? 10 seconds on Google and that task is easily done.
“Prime Minister Stephen Harper along with his wife lay a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier on Remembrance Day, in the country's capital. November 11, 2008.”
➢ Here is the same event but a different shooter. “Rememberance” is spelt wrong! What is “whis wife”? At least the photographer has her name.
“Ottawa, ON: Prime Minister Stephen Harper, accompanied by whis wife, Laureen, lay a reef during the 2008 Rememberance Day Ceremonies on Parliament Hill.”
➢ Below is a caption for a photo featuring a single person doing a key moment, escorts the eternal flame. How does the photographer not get the name of this person? The caption reads that it is at the end of the event! The person’s name should have been easily obtained.
“Ottawa, ON: A soldier escorts the eternal flame after the 2008 Remembrance Day Ceremonies on Parliament Hill.”
➢ There were also a couple of mis-entered photos in the News category. A lead singer on stage with their face blocked by the microphone while they sing is NOT a news picture; it is not even a good entertainment photo! And a loose boring overall night picture of people waiting for a Christmas parade to start is NOT a news photo. That is a bad feature photo.
➢ The Sports category had 16 entries. There was one photo with a blank caption, mistakes happen, so I will let that one go. The rest of the captions looked pretty clean and are not the disasters I saw in the Feature and News category. Overall, the sports pictures entered lacked a lot of high impact moments, some were shot loose and for a couple of pictures, if they were cropped tighter, they would be better photos.
➢ Overall, the Multi-Picture category had weak entries. I know this is a student contest so I do not expect the entries to be as good as the NPAC.ca clip contest. Most students, but not all, will get better with more shooting. So shoot, shoot and shoot some more! Some of the entries Multi-Picture category have the same problems and issues as seen in the Feature and News category. I am now missing a second good NFL playoff game so I am not going to beat this dead horse much longer. Nevertheless, here are a few key points.
➢ There was an entry that featured the dress rehearsal for the Nutcracker. Not a single photo submitted out of the seven (7) photos has a name! Are you kidding me? Some of these photos featured key dancers and or lead people in the performance. Seriously, are you kidding me? There was no program to match up faces and names? The photographer could not ask anyone at the dress rehearsal the names of the key people? One very good tip for events like this where you can gain control of things even for a coupe of minutes during a break. Line up the cast in a straight line and shoot a picture and or two or three if there are a ton of people and then ID them left to right. Then shoot your brains out of the rehearsal. All you need to do back in the office or where ever you file is use your line-up shots to ID all your pictures! If you have a notepad, you can also get everyone to write their name and their character names down and shoot them with the sheet under their chin. Impossible to screw-up the caption at that point! This works great at 3 on 3 basketball, hockey, soccer tournaments and many, many other situations you find yourself in. Failure is not an option in this business and you CAN NOT publish excuses; you can only publish results. End of story there.
November 14, 2008 - Dancers from the Quinte Ballet School rehearse their roles as the Nutcracker and the Sugar Plum Fairy Dancers for their upcoming performance of "The Nutcracker" at the Empire Theatre.
➢ There was a feature on someone named, Gillian Strudwick. The captions are so thin with information you cannot tell what this person does for a living and where the photos were actually taken. They were shot in KINGSTON in “Ward 24”. Is that a hospital or a long-term home? All captions call the subjects, “patient”, but looking at the photos this could be an Alzheimer’s home and or a brain injury long-term home. If this is a home then the people in the photos are residences and not “patients”. Gillian Strudwick is seen “paiting” spelt wrong, making a bed, helping in the bathroom, working with the patient on a picture memory game. Is Strudwick a nurse, an aide, a therapist? Is this a home and or a hospital? This information is needed. Now for the pictures of Strudwick. There are a number of photos that were shot loose with very busy and distracting backgrounds. Students need to know that good consistent pictures should always contain edge-to-edge relevant content to the subject being shot and good lighting is needed. Having a subject that has furniture, chairs and other things growing out a subjects head and or body parts from the background make for really bad pictures!
➢ There was an interesting concept of doing a series of back alley portraits with and off camera flash. Everyone has seen this done to good effect. However, in this case, the captions all have just the subjects name and that they were shot in Belleville somewhere. These captions needed to explain what the concept was for this 10-picture package. Was it just a look at people that walk down a certain alley and or street?
Comments for Portrait category for November 2008 Loyalist photo contest.
As in the earlier categories, there are some continued problems and issues with students’ entries in the portrait category.
➢ Overall, this category was weak. Several entries were just snapshots at live events and not really portraits per say, yet they were entered in this category. Several pictures were more enterprise photos and not in fact portraits. Several pictures were loose and lacked the impacted needed and expected for a good, solid publishable photograph. There were pictures submitted where the photographer was not paying attention to the details. There were a couple of photographs that had items growing out of the subject’s head, items that really SHOULD NOT be growing out of the subject’s head in order to make for a good publishable. It is up to the photographer, that is pushing the button, to make sure when taking pictures whether that is a portrait, enterprise, news, sports and other subject matters that you have relevant content edge to edge in your frame and that you have good lighting. Whether that is available light, flash photography and or a mix of the two lighting sources. This is a paid profession and there are basic standards that have to be met in order to be paid by someone or some company to take pictures.
➢ Out of the 18 entries received, there were no names supplied for six (6) pictures in their captions! Three of the unnamed subjects were shot at Remembrance Day and three others were shot at a dress rehearsal at The Nutcracker. That is 1/3 of the entries with NO NAMES! As mentioned before in earlier comments about other entries, “ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!??” This is a portrait category; every single entry should have a name supplied! No excuses or free passes here, as a working photographer you just CAN NOT come back to the office and or submit pictures to a client for publications with NO NAMES!!! The six pictures mentioned above are not even really portraits, they are snapshots taken at a live event where little and or no effort was put in by the photographer to frame and capture a solid image and there was even less effort put into getting the subject’s name. This is s business with a shrinking job market and only the photographers that work the hardest with the best professional and publishable results will every get a chance at gaining paid employment in the future. Best advice right now, start-practising standard, day-in, and day-out expected results, do this NOW, well before you graduate college. Paying customers have little patience for unprofessional behaviours and or habits.
➢ Another entry had a portrait of a live character actor. The caption only had the person’s character name. This is the portrait category; the person’s real and actual name should also be included in the supplied caption. If this photo were to run as a portrait, it would be for a feature story, one that would list the person’s real name!
➢ There were a couple of entries that were close to placing but were missing simple additional props that could of easily added extra impact to the final captured and submitted image. One photo was of a volleyball coach. The photo was pretty well done, it was shot through the net with an off camera flash. Decent as submitted, but not great. This photo could have been easily improved by getting the coach to hold or toss a ball, holding a coaching clipboard. The photo as submitted had a little bit too much dead space in the photograph; it would have easily been improved with the edition of an extra prop. The other photograph of note that was submitted that was missing a prop was the owner of an online cigar store. The owner is standing in front and surrounded by cigars. There is some extra dead space in this photograph that could easily been dealt with by a slight changing of the camera angle but the biggest thing missing was the owner holding one of the cigars that he sells!! Whether the cigar is lit and or not lit (if he was cheap) would not matter. This subject sells cigars and he should be holding at least one, if not smoking one! Backlit smoke from a cigar can add a lot to an environmental portrait.
➢ Above, I mentioned that you have to watch your backgrounds and make sure that there are items not growing out of a subject’s heads (or other body parts) that can quickly lead to wrecking a good possible photograph. That being said, there are times where you can actually frame items to grow out of a subject’s head that can end-up enhancing the final impact of the photograph. While the first and second placed photos was a bit of a coin flip because it was that close to call, the first place photo is one of those times where having items growing out of a subjects head that actually works. Having a vampire subject and using the lighting fixture to frame his head, along with the extra broken lighting filling the rest of the background makes for a decent photograph.
➢ To all students entering and to the ones that are not entering this contest. KEEP SHOOTING, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot, shoot and then shoot some more and then SHOOT some more. It is the only way you are ever going to get better and secure regular paid work in the future. There are several times more available for hire photographers than there are paid jobs, whether that be freelance and or full-time work.
Click here to return to November results.
