Whew, picture judging at Chelsea Community Fair was not the ‘piece of cake’ that the judges in the cake decorating committe had!

The photo competition-it took over two hours to judge everything- had at least a dozen different categories, color, bw, animal, people, landscape, collage and more.

My greatest overall impression is that young photographers rock! In the 6-8 year category a photo of a duckling from a very low vantage point was a standout. I felt the 9 to 12 year photographer color landscape photography category was the strongest category of all. A gorgeous 1/2 above &1/2 below water image was a pastel beauty . The second place pond picture with strong cattails in the foreground was a sunny delight. And the third place winner of Lake Michigan sunset was a moody beauty while the 4th place little 4×6 sunset was better than most sunsets in all other categories.

When judging the children portrait categories, Lori Zahn instructed me to judge each image as to “how well the photographer conveyed the child’s ‘spirit’”. That was difficult because of uneven print quality. A few images showed promising personality and spirit, but were printed too darkly or were mis-focused or the composition was a hindrance. Several images were technically sharp and well printed, but the smiles were frozen and ‘unspirited’. One photograph had beautiful lighting, was crisp with nice composition but the little persons demeanor was not pleasing… So I relied heavily on overall ‘impact’ to choose the blue ribbon images.

After judging I suggested they split the children’s categories into ‘professional portraits’ and ‘non professional portraits’. When they told me ALL the portraits in the Children’s categories were professional portraits I was surprised. I expect consistent high quality from professional portrait providers. Lori told me many area professionals sell digital images and the prints were made by the moms–so that explains the poor print quality. (This is precisely why I do not want Photo Generations clients printing images we make–I want to control what the final image looks like!–a poor print can ruin a gorgeous portrait).

All in all, the photo judging was a lot of fun. I’ve returned to the studio happy, feeling strongly that the images I provide for my clients truly are of excellent, if not top quality available in the Ann Arbor area .