Re: Thoughts on Judging (Dr. "F")

[P3D Dr. George A. Themelis <DrT-3d@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Erlys in Mill Valley, thanks for sharing this refreshing story
regarding Dr. "F" and his peculiar judgement!

>Dr. "F" tried to explain the following: The only way photography becomes 
>art is if it shows a truth in a unique way. Stereo make a scene look more 
>realistic than an ordinary photograph does. Therefore stereo tends 
>to veer away from art rather than move toward it. The more realistic a 
>scene is rendered, the less it shows a unique point of view.

>This point was lost on our members, for the most part. He gave one of my 
>ocean scenes first place one night, and nobody else could understand why. 
>It had no pizazz, no center of interest, it was just the ocean taken at 
>sundown with nothing else in it, just a horizon and the ocean. Dr. "F" 
>said it was the best our club had to offer that night. I remember 
>wondering why they chose Dr. "F" to judge stereo if they disagreed with 
>his choices of winning slides. 

>In subsequent judgings I learned from Dr. "F" that it was okay to be out 
>of sync, okay to have my own opinion of what I liked in stereo, okay to 
>trust my own judgement.  I think I learned more from him than I did from 
>all the other judges. (Still, I have to confess that when I knew Dr. "F" 
>was coming to be our judge, I chose my slides according to what I thought 
>would win ...) I was always surprised at the slides that won. Always.

Interesting story, brings up a lot of questions regarding judging
and how subjective it is.  In my first steps in stereo competitions
I face the dilemma of trusting my own judgement vs. trying to outguess
the judges.  Once I noticed that judges gave higher scores to 7p slides
vs. 5p, I started mounting slides in 7p mounts even though my own
feeling was that composition-wise a 5p mount was better.  That's a 
practice that I have abandoned now.

I tend to do quite a bit of abstract 3d work that gets mixed results in
PSA competitions.  I have a feeling that Dr. "F" would have liked some
of these pictures, but then, you never know! -- George in Ohio.


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