Appropriate To Consider Photo Title in Print Competition?

<p><br /> In a judged print competition, is it appropriate that:<br>

a photo title that adds impact to the story telling can improve the score, <br>

and<br>

a photo title that does not add to the story telling can subtract from the score?</p>

<p>Yes, but the appropriate word is "can" rather than "will" or "does",</p>

<p>Some competitions are judged so quickly espcially at the early stages and at such a range that the judge(s) may not notice whether there's a title or not. Other times all that information has to be on the back of the print/mount. </p>

My opinion based inc judging a few photo and print competitions....

 

What counts is having a terrific photo to start with and then good presentation (matting).

 

Having a stupid name on a great photo will not cost you points. But it won't help you either. Having a stupid or a great

name will not help you if the photo is merely good and can hurt you if the choice is between two roughly equal images.

 

Basically my advice is to be direct in how you title a photo (example: "Amy, April 25,2011" ) and don't be a bad poet

(example: "Amy, resplendent in the wings of the crepuscular light of a dawning spring day") .

 

Don't try to tell me how to feel or what to think with your titles. Either your photo itself provokes the appropriate emotional,

aesthethic and intellectual reaction in me as a viewer or it does not.

<p>Some of the competitive exhibitions I am familiar with do not allow the judges to see titles and artist's names. I think that is a good thing. I have heard a lot of photographers complain about the titles others use. Generally, the complaints I've heard are against titles invoking the actions of the gods. Such titles as, "Oh Almighty God, You Have Heard My Plea," are often resented by people who don't subscribe to the actions of gods, and assume that this titling influences judges because of the predominate religious culture.</p>

<p>I don't see much reason for a photograph to have a title, unless it is a journalism photograph, or part of historic record keeping - "Krohn Building - 1956," for instance. When I view photographs I have no interest in the title. The photograph has to interest me on its photographic merits.</p>

<p>I have presonally witnessed (on numerious occasions) a title having an effect on a judge's score when the scores are challenged and justifications are in order.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>I have personally witnessed (on numerious occasions) a title having an effect on a judge's score when the scores are challenged and justifications are in orde</em>r.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Proving judges are human. </p>

<p>As long as judges are consistent, they are pretty much free to use whatever criteria they want. If a judge consistently up-scores images with good titles on the basis that the title is part of the experience of the image, then there isn't a problem. It's only a problem if that judge does it for some images but not others.</p>

<p>Many times the judges look at so many things that it can boggle their minds and reading titles is probably not on their list of important activities. My own thought, based on the results I generally see, is that having a very good photograph that looks like something they will have already seen seems to work--I am being facetious, sort of. Seriously, I do think that sometimes work does get into a contest because it does look like something that is known to be good.</p>

<p>As a judge, I would be totally turned off by the type of title Ellis waxed poetic with and might not pick an image just because it had one of those titles--that is if I had a desire to look at the title in the first place.</p>

<p>I have been ask to judge many photo club or local contest in the past years..i honestly dont really read anything below a image personnaly... i mean, i first look at the print, then i have a better look at the print quality, then if the image AND print are stunning, i might have a look at then name as a thing to wrap the whole story..but it is for me like the technical f5.6, iso 200, nikon something that sometime photographer put on there little card under the image during a exibition.. dont really care about that either... the image is or not grab my attention its what really matter to me.</p>

<p>When the file are display on the wall with a projector for example.. theres no name at all that appear, since most of the time the contest rule specify that the file naming should be like this ... lavoie_patrick_thisisa thingofbeauty.jpg and they dont display the title for obvious reason..(at least in my country ; )</p>

<p>The social critic John Berger talks about exactly this in his book <em>Ways of Seeing.</em> An image titled in one way may be perceived entirely differently from the same image under a different label. </p>

<p>He has a dramatic example, but I won't spoil its effect by describing it. It's an excellent book, even some 40 years after it was published.</p>

I just spent about an hour and one half watching a dozen or so episode segments of John Berger's documentary <I>Ways of Seeing</I> on Youtube hoping to see what that mysterious "effect" was. I got a bit irritated what with hearing him blathering on and on and skipping forward to see if that mysterious "effect" was in there somewhere. I never found it but did develop a bit of a loathing for Mr. Berger because of my wasted time and effort. Now I don't care what that "effect" was and am sure it isn't worth any further effort on my part.

I have read "Ways of Seeing" a few times and Berger makes a few good points. He clearly loves photographs but in

the end his writings are an extension of how he looks at the world as as someone with a literature based intellect. I

suspect videos are not the best way to approach him or how he thinks.

 

Better at least for me because they are actually PHOTOGRAPHERS first are Robert Adams essays and books and

Stephen Shore's "The Nature of Photographs".

<p>I like <em>Title TK</em> by The Breeders. And REM's <em>Fables of the Reconstruction</em> or <em>Reconstruction of the Fables</em>, which works only in the context of the original cover art. But there aren't many clever enough to risk irritating judges who may find irony or wordplay pretentious, or for whom idiomatic expressions may not translate well.</p>