>>4151771Contd.
Image related: First prize for Railway, Color, Digital.
(2/3)
We have two types of judging, one for photo exhibitions and one for a magazine. The contests have a theme (e.g. Culture, Lines & Structure, Color Red, Ice, Emotion, Minimalism, Live or Open) and distinguish submissions between print and digital, also distinguish color and black and white.
There are 3 jurors (they are chosen by the organizer), each of whom can rate a submission between 1-10, which means that a submission can receive a maximum of 30 points. There are 3 rounds of judging. In the first round, the jurors roughly sift through and evaluate the entries. Here the wheat is separated from the chaff, e.g. with a limit of 24-26 points a more manageable number is allowed into the second round. Entries that make it to the second round are scored up or down here, depending on whether a juror thinks they are favorites or not. In the third round, a manageable number of images are on the table, which are then really analyzed and discussed in detail by the 3 jurors. Here, the first 3 places are then determined and further submissions are selected to make it into the magazine or exhibition.
In the largest section (photos in digital and color, theme Open) we have about 2500 submissions. Until the judges at photo shows have evaluated all the submissions for every section they look through photos for about 2.5 days, evaluating them. Technically poor photos or uninteresting photos inevitably fall out of the competition. Winning photos are always those that have a sophistication over the other entries, often those that have a unique selling point.
