By Ellen Bedrosian

I know how discouraging it can be when you’ve worked really hard on an image for competition, and the judge doesn’t give you as high a score as you think it deserved. I’ve been on the receiving end of what I perceived to be an unjust score. And, I’m sure that many photographers in other camera clubs where I’ve judged competitions think I’ve given their entries an unjust score.

I’ll let you in on a little secret if you haven’t figured it out for yourself by now. Judges have different ways of scoring images. During the NJFCC Spring Print Competition, one of my fellow judges and I had a discussion about some of the criteria we use while judging images. I tend to take into consideration how difficult the shot was to get. Let’s face it, it’s a lot easier to control the lighting when you’re shooting a model in a studio as opposed to shooting a lion while on safari in Kenya. If images are tied during an NJFCC competition and judges have to choose one equally stunning image of another, I’ll take the difficulty aspect into consideration. Not all judges do. My fellow judge doesn’t think the level of difficulty of capturing the image should matter at all.

So when you get a little miffed that your capture of a great white shark eating a seal scored lower than a vase of flowers, keep in mind that some judges might not care that you were almost on the shark’s menu.