NPPA BOP judging explained

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|| SportsShooter.com: News Item: Posted 2003-04-07

NPPA BOP judging explained
Robert Seale explains why no award for Sports Portfolio was given this year

By Robert Seale, The Sporting News

For the second year in a row, the NPPA BOP contest decided not to award a winner in the Sports Photographer of the Year portfolio category. I know this upsets a lot of people – I was shocked and outraged last year when Bert came back from the contest last year, and there was no winner.

My thoughts went something like this:
* This is an outrage!
* These people are idiots…
* Bert was over-ruled by a bunch of PIB’s (Ponytails in Black…our lingo for elitist, photoj snobs...)
* These people don’t know sports.
* If I was a judge, this would NEVER happen…

I even wrote a nasty set of mock comments imitating a bunch of snobby judges and their thought processes and sent it out as an email to some friends.

It was only natural then, after bitching so much about it, that I was asked to be a judge this year. I told everyone we were gong to fix this problem, damnit. If three people enter this contest with pictures of their Aunt Mabel waterskiing, then we should judge them 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

I even went to dinner with the judges on the first night we arrived in St. Petersburg, and I railed on about last year’s travesty. I was hell-bent on making changes for this year. I eyed the other judges suspiciously that first night, trying to determine who would stand in the way of us coming up with a winner.

Here’s how the judging works. We sit in a room looking at a screen, and look at the entries. In many of the categories, where there are a lot of entries, we decide that an entry needs 3 out of 5 judges to vote for it to keep it in. If someone feels very strongly about something, we usually keep it in anyway – even if it only gets one or two votes. After this rough edit is finished, you are left with as few as 10, or as many as 30-40 photos. Then we do a second round and weed it down to 10-15… then we do a third round, and we get it down to usually 5-8 entries. Then we print those out and everyone votes for their own 1st, 2nd, 3rd. First gets 4 points, 2nd gets 3 points, 3rd gets 2 points. The point totals are added and this determines the winner. People with conflicts (i.e. coworkers or employees in the contest, etc…) remove themselves from all the judging in that category.

We then go through what is left and determine the HM’s… It is important to remember that photos sometimes place despite a wide variety of opinions on what the order should be. Just because a photo wins first place doesn’t mean every judge voted for it for first – some may not have voted for it at all.

In sports portfolio, and in sports picture story, we went through all the entries, and nobody voted to keep anything in in the “rough edit” round.

We were not looking for some unattainable goal. We were not looking for the second coming of Neil Leifer. An average portfolio with some well cropped, well edited, SHARP photos from, say…2 or 3 different sports could have won this category. We literally had very little to work with. You have no idea, and you can’t possibly understand, unless you sat in that chair and looked at the photos. (Actually, if you wish – you can see all the entries online…)

Please understand that these were not a bunch of photojournalism snobs looking for a grainy black and white picture story on the running of the bulls in Pamplona. These were solid people who I respect a great deal. Beth Keiser was an AP staffer in Chicago who has shot tons of sports including most of the Michael Jordan era of the Bulls. Mike Sargent is a veteran newsman who worked for many newspapers in North Carolina before a long career with AFP… now he is a Vice President at Getty. Horatio Villalobos and Jean Francois Leroy are both veteran photojournalists who know what a good sports picture is. We wanted desperately to give out this award. Don’t think for a minute that there was some high-minded discussion about setting a standard or any kind of crap like that. The standards were very relaxed, and we could not find a winner. We were very forgiving. I can’t emphasize this enough.

Maria Mann, the contest chair, who is deeply troubled by the lack of winners in sports, asked me, after we looked at the entires… "Robert, what is going on with sports… why are people not entering?"

Here’s what I told her:

"Sports photographers have been conditioned over the years, that a REAL sports picture… (a pass play from a football game, or a glass remote from basketball, or an Olympic photo) will not win in this contest. One year a photo of a child playing T-ball, shot in black and white won in sports action. Another year, I remember the running of the bulls photo won. Last year was someone swimming the English Channel. The message that was sent over many years was that this contest does not reward what real photojournalists shoot day in and day out. As a rule, most people that shoot sports are INSULTED by these winners over the years, and therefore most figure, “why bother?”"

The NPPA is committed, I hope to changing this perception. This is a new era for this contest. I have no beef with the University of Missouri, but I think we can all agree that the split between POY and NPPA has hurt both contests in both quality and quantity. I wish everyone could come to a consensus and get along, so that we have one definitive contest here in the US. Until that happens, I figure we’ve all already paid our 75 bucks for an NPPA membership, this is the contest that puts out the Best of Photojournalism book that all the members receive each year, so in my view, if I’m going to enter a contest, I’m going to enter the one that produces a lasting record of that year’s pictures.

The NPPA has got to do a better job of publicizing the contest, and letting the members know that this is one of the main benefits of membership.

While we are on the subject of not giving awards... I actually made a motion not to award anything in one of the other categories, but I was over-ruled. This category was far worse than any of the sports categories in my opinion. My view was - you can't hold sports to some kind of standard, and then not have the same standard with the other categories.

After looking at 27,000 pictures last week, I feel like I can make some observations about the contest in general – outside of the sports categories… these are only my personal opinions:

* Just because your publication bought you a plane ticket to (insert foreign, exotic hotspot here…) does not make you a good photojournalist. You still have to take good pictures, and find great stories when you get there.

* Try exploring your own community before you explore Afghanistan. Jamie Francis (St. Petersburg Times) shot a great picture story in his own backyard (the Cliff Edom award), and it was one of the highlights of everyone’s week to see his outstanding work.

* There are great stories everywhere. Just because someone has cancer, is born with a “rare disease”, is missing 1, 2, 3, or 4 limbs, is a burn victim, etc… doesn’t mean it is a great picture story. We got the impression photographers (and newspaper editors) are aiming for contest wins rather than just trying to tell stories from their own community. You could shoot a picture story on a Dairy Queen in Kansas; a mechanic in an auto shop, a tugboat captain, a high school football team… anything! You can make a good picture story out of any subject if you are a good visual storyteller. Afflictions are not necessary to win.

* Picture stories do not have to be shot in grainy black and white

* Picture stories do not have to be converted to black and white for contests, especially when you enter the same photographs in color in other categories.

* Basic rules of good composition, correct shutter speed, and reasonable focus and sharpness still apply to picture story categories.

* Your photos will stay on the screen an average of 2-3 seconds. If it needs a 150 word caption to explain what is going on, then it probably won’t grab the judges attention.

* Picture stories are not an excuse for tilted horizons in EVERY picture. If you have an inner ear problem – go see an ENT specialist or buy a bubble level.

* Learn to use your flash carefully. We all know how difficult it can be to use a flash with a digital camera; harsh direct flash in all the pictures in your portfolio will definitely hurt your chances at contest time.

* Enter, enter, enter… This is like voting for political office – you can’t bitch if you didn’t enter. I will be entering next year – and I hope everyone else does to.

* Take care of your own contest entries. At some large newspapers and magazines, contests are entered by a contest coordinator. This is a license for someone else to screw up your entry with poor cropping, poor toning, and bad editing. Don’t let someone else’s bad day or hasty work mess up your entry.

* Check your captions for errors. Although we were very forgiving and loose with this, (we had photos that made some of the cuts with the caption information from another picture), we are still journalists, and we should do a better job of spelling and writing in general.

* Contests are incredibly subjective. I had what I consider to be one of my best years’ in 1998 – a very diverse group of images. I was very excited to enter the contest. I thought for sure I would at least get an HM. Guess what – I didn’t… I haven’t entered since. This is part of the problem – we all have to realize that this is only the opinion of 5 people, and we have to dust ourselves off and enter next year.

And most importantly. Remember. It’s only a contest.

Robert Seale is a staff photographer for The Sporting News. Previously, he was a staff photographer for the Augusta Chronicle and the Houston Post.

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