Print Comp categories

[Tashia]

We are having a large debate at our affiliate regarding print comp categories.

There is one side that ones to move to PPA's way of doing things with just 3 categories Open, Commercial and Electronic Imaging. the argument for this is to simplify things and so that each print is judged on it's own merit.

The other side wants multiple categories so that the members can use their win in specific categories such as wedding, portrait, fine art etc. to promote their business through press release, web and blog postings and so forth.

I would like to get some thoughts from other affiliates so your input would be appreciated.

[Rick_Massarini]

It all depends upon your association's aim in their competition. At the International Judging, the aim is to reward high quality images with merits towards towards the Masters and Imaging Excellence degrees.
If you were to adopt this model at your state or regional judging, then you would be presenting only a very few awards. At a state or regional, usually there are more awards given in more categories (Portrait, Wedding, Commercial, Ilustrative, Digital Print, Digital Retouching, etc...) so it gives more people more chances for recognition in a particular specialty. At our state and regional affiliate, the prints are grouped into just 3 categories for Judging purposes (Photographic Open, Commercial, EI), but are separated into Portrait, Wedding, Ilustrative, etc. categories after they have been scored. Then the best of each sub-category are brought back up for trophy consideration.

[D._Craig_Flory]

Hi Tashia;

In PPAofPa, we have a number of categories. I would not want less. In Portrait ... Man / Woman / Child / Group / Animal . In wedding ... Wedding Candid / Wedding Portrait. Plus, we have Illustrative (Salon). We also have a category of Craft ... using a photo or photos in a unique or unusual manner.

We also have the commercial categories and the wedding albums.

When I served on the state board I would have fought any attempt at narrowing down the categories.

[Jeff_Dachowski]

At the state level we have Portrait, Social event, Illustrative, and commercial and Albums.

None of the images are judged any differently because of the category. They are judged with the 12 elements in mind. The categories are beneficial at awards time.



Jeff

[D._Craig_Flory]

Here is a link to the 2007 print rules for PPAofPa. You can look at all the categories we have .

http://www.ppaofpa.org/pdf_PrintRule...ls_FullSet.pdf

[Tashia]

I won the battle. We kept our current categories and added one for fine art.