MPA Judges Training Day

I had a great day yesterday up in Coventry for the Judges Training Day. A big thank you to Kevin Wilson for what was a very informative and educational day.

It is always good to meet up with other photographers and to get a chance to spend a day with the people that regularly judge the MPA qualifications and awards was great.

The day covered the criteria for each type of panel, the judging conditions and the way that the qualification assessment takes place. One thing it does give you is confidence in the system when you know that your panel will be assessed by five qualified and trained judges. at the end of each panel assessment one of the judges is nominated to talk the candidate through their panel highlighting the good points as well as the areas that need improving.

In the afternoon we covered judging competition prints, we all had to bring prints with us for this part ! We took it in turn to work alongside existing judges to score the images as they came up using the same equipment to record the scores as is used for the Nationals. Some prints generated lively debate amongst the panel and it was interesting to see how a discrepancy in the judges scores is dealt with, if the difference is more than 10 then it triggers an automatic discussion with the judge who scored the highest going first.

I have come away knowing far more about the process, as well as the importance of choosing the right images, printing them on the right paper and ensuring that the presentation is perfect.

I must admit I was quite pleased that all my prints scored over 80 and my favourite of the beggar scored 90 (with some pointers as to how I can improve this score)

If you get the chance to take part in one of these days in the future then do it, it has been a very valuable learning experience.