AV News 187 - February 2012
As I stated in my previous letters and as also indicated by Chris, it is not the
expectation of winning that's important, although this is a very welcome
bonus, it's the pride in taking part and showing ones work to others. To put it
another way involving and encouraging every AV worker who dares to enter
competition and hopefully raise the standard of AV production.
By referring to my previous letters readers will note that my rejections in
2009 appeared to be on grounds other than AV quality. To quote from my
letter in Feb 2010 'future Nationals are to be taken over by the RPS AV Group
and I will be interested to see if future rules are aimed at encouraging a wider
group of entrants or biased towards elitism and federation club membership'.
I was assured that future pre selection would be handled on a much fairer
basis and when I read the competition rules, initially, I felt reassured that the
rule regarding entrants with more than one entry would bring about a fairer
pre selection. I am now however disappointed to note that some entrants
appear to have flouted the rules regarding multi entries and got away with it.
If entrants flout the rules by not indicating the acceptance priority of multi
entries and there are too many entries then the first action the
judges/committee should take is to simply randomly reject one of the entries
thereby giving more entrants a chance of being shown. As I felt then and
indicated, as many entrants as possible should be encouraged to enter and
not be cast aside at the first hurdle. There appears to be a wide difference in
judges opinions and so who's to say that the entry rejected at pre selection
will not be praised at the final event. If there are too many entrants/entries
then pre selection is necessary but all entrants should where possible be
given at least one entry, not some two and others none.
As I have stated previously all entrants need to know they are all
competing on a level playing field. I feel we need to encourage as many
participants/competition entrants, particularly new entrants, as possible in
this fantastically expressive form of photography.
All rejections at pre selection level surely deserve a short note on why their
entry was rejected, at least to make the lost entry fee a little more palatable
and to encourage improvement to acceptance level. Perhaps there should be
some discussion in AV News as to what method of judging is used at pre
selection and the main event in order to make sure judging is on a fair basis
and aimed at content and quality not just a judges likes and dislikes and
whether or not the entrant will be attending.
Like Chris I would also be interested in knowing how 77 entries could be
judged in what appears to be one day but only 64 judged in two days.
This year I submitted only one entry, feeling this was the fairest way to
enter and if I was to be rejected again, fortunately I was not, then I had not
thrown away two not inconsiderable entry fees, that's £24.00 for the pr