DSS #42 Guest Judge comments...

VisualXpressions

I thought I would give the community some insight into how I choose my top 10 as the guest judge for DSS #42 Photojournalism (Exclusive Black and White Challenge). I will begin by letting everyone know that I am a 20 year US Navy Veteran and in the later years of my career I changed jobs and became a US Navy Photojournalist, I have had photos published in print and online by major civilian and Department of Defense news and information outlets. So I have experience in this style of photography… I don’t know if I was asked to be a judge because of this or not.
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When the contest ended and I started analyzing the 57 submissions I realized there was a problem… I was supposed to judge 57 images based on weather or not they fit into the broad category of photojournalism along with the B&W condition and any other technical aspect a reasonable person would use to judge any photo (these later not being a big issue). To give you an example of what I’m talking about take the NPPA best of photojournalism 2010 competition for instance, it has 27 entry categories covering subjects as specific as returning veterans to broader topics such as international news, general news and domestic news. The reason there are so many categories in a photojournalism contests is because of the wide diversity of photojournalism, the fact that some PJ's only work for small town news outlets while others work for larger organizations, and some specialize in things like sports or nature. Photos that fall into some categories will most always have more impact than photos in other categories so it really wouldn’t be fair to judge all photojournalism photos against each other… So what I did was put myself in the position of photo editor and asked myself if I knew the story the photo was trying to tell, how well is the photo telling this story and does it tell the whole story or could I see more than one story being told… Then I went deeper… by making up a story in my head and looking at the photo and asking, did it have all the elements and words I was using in my story… most photos are pictures of nouns (people places or things), a good photojournalist image will also include verbs, adverbs, and adjectives, in other words someone should be able to easily read the story simply by looking at the image… After this process I ended up with 20 possible. Then I looked at composition, focus, and BW conversion… I ended up with 15… The 10 I finally choose fit into many different Photojournalism categories such as sports, spot news, human interest, even documentary… The ones with the most emotional impact, told the story the best and were the best technically made my top 10… I ended up voting for the one I liked the best but most of these photos would not be judged against each other in a photojournalism competition…
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I understand the controversy that evolved during the contest… and even though there were issues I think it ended up being a great experience for those who participated.
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Winston<o:p></o:p>

Tango

I appreciate your judging style, I think your view on how to do it worked out well except the cutting floor was covered with all the slicing and dicing:D

Lots of young PJ's broken hearts out there:D

Well somebody's gotta do it right?, I'm sure glad I didnt have to judge this round!

VisualXpressions

AaronNelson wrote:

I appreciate your judging style, I think your view on how to do it worked out well except the cutting floor was covered with all the slicing and dicing:D

Lots of young PJ's broken hearts out there:D

Well somebody's gotta do it right?, I'm sure glad I didnt have to judge this round!

Thanks for the Props Aaron... I try not to be a heart breaker... I try to let them down easy....

If you want the real Haiti relief effort story... check out this link and just type in Haiti in the search... If you type in winston c pitman you will see about 25 of my images still on this sitehttp://www.navy.mil/search/photolist.asp


Winston

HoofClix

Winston, I'm glad you were one of the judges! I for one never questioned your background because of all of the great images you've submitted over the past few years! I hope you won't sour and will come back to judge again someday..

VisualXpressions

HoofClix wrote:

Winston, I'm glad you were one of the judges! I for one never questioned your background because of all of the great images you've submitted over the past few years! I hope you won't sour and will come back to judge again someday..

As long as I stay out of the brine I don't think I'll sour much... I know I haven't ever been very vocal on the board and less so lately... I mostly lurk, but I'm around and always willing to help out... Funny... I was asked to guest judge this challenge and at the same time thinking... wow I'm kinda excited about this challenge, I think I'll enter this one...

jwear

I think you did a GREAT job of judging
I thank you for judging with an open mind. I knew I would not make the top 5 but making the finals made me proud.
The folks that share their view like it is written in stone make me Nothing in life is 1 way.
Well maybe at dgrin
Congrats to the winners this round I made a bet and picked 4 of the top 5 , so in a way I did win. Thank you for the votes and I think this round was well done and everyone that entered learned and won

rutt

VisualXpressions wrote:

If you want the real Haiti relief effort story... check out this link and just type in Haiti in the search... If you type in winston c pitman you will see about 25 of my images still on this sitehttp://www.navy.mil/search/photolist.asp

I could not make this work. I could get Wilson C Pitman photos, but they were all at least 5 years old. Or I could get more than 1000 Haiti pictures. But if I search for Haiti first and then for Wilson C Pitman, I end up with the same your name, I end up with the same old pictures of yours. I think I need clearer instructions. Thanks.

richtersl

Winston, I think you did a great job of judging. Your experience made you the perfect choice.

VisualXpressions

rutt wrote:

I could not make this work. I could get Wilson C Pitman photos, but they were all at least 5 years old. Or I could get more than 1000 Haiti pictures. But if I search for Haiti first and then for Wilson C Pitman, I end up with the same your name, I end up with the same old pictures of yours. I think I need clearer instructions. Thanks.

Sorry for the misunderstanding Rutt I didn't mean to give the impression that I had been in Haiti and taken pictures ( I only wish...) The reason you get my images 5 years or older is because I retired from the Navy in 2004...

When I was looking up Navy PJ shots of Haiti I thought I would see if any of my old images were still on the Navy.mil web site... I was reminiscing :cry besides I was on my third glass of wine... probably the reason I mentioned my own images at all... I normally don't like to toot my own horn so to speak.

Anyway I just thought those who were interested could go to this site and see how the US Navy was documenting the relief effort in Haiti... You don't see very many of these images in the civilian press, and if you did you may not realize they were shot by Navy PJ's because the civilian press rarely gives a by line... most of the time they just use photo by: US Navy photo

rutt

VisualXpressions wrote:

Sorry for the misunderstanding Rutt I didn't mean to give the impression that I had been in Haiti and taken pictures ( I only wish...)

Speaking of covering the situation in Haiti, take a look at some of Damon Winter's Haiti work for The New York Times. Doesn't look like fun, but Winter is an amazing photographer (Pulitzer in 2009) and these are incredibly moving (but difficult to look at) pictures.

VisualXpressions

rutt wrote:

Speaking of covering the situation in Haiti, take a look at some of Damon Winter's Haiti work for The New York Times. Doesn't look like fun, but Winter is an amazing photographer (Pulitzer in 2009) and these are incredibly moving (but difficult to look at) pictures.

WoW!

Daddy0

Mr. Winston,

Not sure if this is the right place or if allowed to ask this, but can you give C&C as to why the photo I submitted was not up to snuff. I seem to notice that there is a tremendous amount of emphasis put on what you do with the picture after it is taken, rather than the picture itself. I'm here to learn, and learning by making mistakes usually means you haven't stopped trying.

Thanks in advance.

jwear

Daddy0 wrote:

Mr. Winston,

Not sure if this is the right place or if allowed to ask this, but can you give C&C as to why the photo I submitted was not up to snuff. I seem to notice that there is a tremendous amount of emphasis put on what you do with the picture after it is taken, rather than the picture itself. I'm here to learn, and learning by making mistakes usually means you haven't stopped trying.

Thanks in advance.

it would be better if you ask this in a thread of it's own but here is a shot at it.If you take the caption from your shot --what does it say ?I know what you were getting at . I put my shot in for the reason that when I had folks look at it I had 2 reactions very bad and very good-- it was great shot or poor squirrel but always a reaction. I did not do the caption as well as I may have but that was the story behind my shot to me .
With out the caption on your shot you look for something ,you need to draw them in .You will get lot better feed back in the general forum [challenge]

VisualXpressions

Daddy0 wrote:

Mr. Winston,

Not sure if this is the right place or if allowed to ask this, but can you give C&C as to why the photo I submitted was not up to snuff. I seem to notice that there is a tremendous amount of emphasis put on what you do with the picture after it is taken, rather than the picture itself. I'm here to learn, and learning by making mistakes usually means you haven't stopped trying.

Thanks in advance.

Sure Daddy0... I'll put a critique of your image in the DSS #42 feedback thread when I get home from work this evening... Not sure what you mean by... "I seem to notice that there is a tremendous amount of emphasis put on what you do with the picture after it is taken, rather than the picture itself." I'll try and answer it like this... Post processing is part of the photography trade, always has been weather in a darkroom or on a computer... in a nut shell though, no amount of post processing can make a bad image good, but in most cases it can help to make a good image better... hope this answers your observation?

Winston