Joona

I didnt win. I knew my photograph would be technically way above every one elses, and as the winner was to get paid studio work in the end of the semester I was certain techical aspects would play a key role.

bullshit.

there was only 4 other entries:

A

B

C

Ill let you guess which one won.

Yeah it was A.

I got a bit mad. Come the fuck on? that piece of shit won? Should have knowledge of studio lighting? I wouldnt call myself a master but I know a bit or two and its more than fucking key and fill light. The other 4 didnt even use that.

Anyway, I sent a nice email to the "judges" of the competition (its a long ish conversation so Ill just underline the best bits):

Them annoucing the winner:
"Dear All,
A massive Thank you and Well done to those of you who recently entered our sports photography competition. The standard of the images and ideas you portrayed were exceptional. I am pleased to announce that Josh xxxxxxx's Junior Rugby photo has been chosen as the winner. It was a very hard decision as all the entries were very good indeed, Josh gave an insightful description of his image and perfectly captured the concept of 'Emotion' for the competition. As the winner, Josh will now complete paid studio time working alongside the University elite athlete squad and Sports Development team to compile a new and exciting set of images to accompany sport at the institution. All of the photographs entered in the competition are now on display in the window of the sports office on Chester Road, and are also attached to this message. Well done again to Josh and to all of you who took the time to enter, on behalf of the Sports Team I wish you all the best with your future studies."

Alright. I thought, congratulations to the winner, but what the hell, honestly? You must be fucking blind to call that a good photograph? You seriously let playground level photoshop effect fool you?

My first email to them:

"Hi,

Thank you for announcing the winner of the contest. I don’t mean any offense to the decision or the winning photograph/-er, but I think I need to express my dissatisfaction with it.

I really don’t see how the winning photograph would in any way reflect the photographer’s studio work knowledge or skills. Only one of the submitted pictures was produced using studio lighting equipment, whereas at least three of them were shot with teleoptic lenses, cropped out of the full context and simply pulled out of an already existing photo library with no further creativity or input.

I understand how the winning photograph delivers an emotion in a sports situation, but what part of it was created by the photographer? A photograph like that could have been produced by yourself or any other non-photography student at this level. Now we’re talking about the winner working in studio environment, would he be able to pull off a very similar image? Studio work is all about calculating contrast and exposure ratios, using light creatively by adding and removing some of it. There are key and fill lights of which most photographers have heard of and can use them, but portraiture photography – especially commercial such as this is supposed to be – includes more advanced techniques like back lights, rim lights, wraps, hair lights, spots like etc.

All I mean is: as far as I have understood the resulting work portraying the top athletes of our university and student community are mainly for promotional use. If we want to look like a really good organization, ourPR material needs to be top notch. If none of our own students can create work that is of good enough quality, why not leave that to the professionals already proved themselves in the industry?

Alright. I was pretty happy with my email.

Then I get this:

"Hi Joona,

Thank-you for your email, I am glad you take such an interest in photography and I can appreciate the points you have raised.

The main part of the competition was for us to find a student who could transfer an emotion which we currently use as part of our marketing, into a photograph of any kind and explain how the image depicts this. Whilst your image was very good and well lit, you did not fully expand on this main principle of the competition by providing a fully descriptive supporting document.

The whole idea of asking to capture an emotion in a sports setting was to challenge you all to find an exciting person, sport, or activity and explain it in words. We deliberately left the rules relaxed and allowed you all more free reign on your entry, there is no problem if students enter previous work, as long as it is their own.

If we were after the best studio shots possible, we would simply pay for a freelance professional to come in and do this for us. The reason we allow a current student the opportunity to wok with us to create some new images, is to enable a near enough experience of working for a client in the outside world. Yes, by running the competition in this way we might not find the best studio and lighting photographer, but we will hopefully have found the best entrant who has fully understood the task set. It is very important to University Sport Sunderland to work with our current students, providing them with a range of services to compliment their work as part of a degree.

I hope this answers the majority of your questions, and I will ensure we think about your feedback in the future.

Fuck. So he just plainly and simply avoided all my questions. Is this because he knew fuck all about the whole thing? I get this strange feeling that it was actually our tutors at uni who decided over the winner, and they are very very very anti commercial. they will accept any work that has a really artsy fartsy idea but looks like SHIT. i mean TOTAL BULLSHIT. its a photography course and they give best grades to people who didnt even take any of the pictures themselves? what the hell?

Alright. I thought, maybe I didnt make myself clear enough, so I send another email:

"Yes, I understood this, but it seems you missed my point. I mentioned that an image like that hardly had anything to do with the photographers skills of transferring an emotion. The emotion transferred in this image is created by that one black kid in the middle being chased by a group of white kids and their facial expressions. I also asked if the photographer would be able to recreate the image, probably not. I say again, he did not capture an emotion or find an exciting person, sport or activity. Instead, he found an image he thought was related to sports, and put it trough a very simple photoshop trick to emphasize the concept (as much of a clisché as it is).

What im critizing here, is not that my photograph did not win. I hope my first email didnt leave that impression. Instead I am saying that the given assignment and the criteria of your judgement hardly match. You expected the winning photographer to have good knowledge of studio lighting and working in studio environment and digital workflow, but apparently that wasnt taken into account when deciding over the submitted work. From the information you get from the entry you have no idea if the photographers even seen a studio.

What comes to marketing, I agree with trying to use our own students as much as possible. In fact, I think there is far too little co-operation between different parts of the organization and schools in the university. Im just not sure if it is worth it if we cant produce selling material that actually look really good.

Concepts and ideas are a great thing, but they shouldnt justify low
technical quality.


P.S.

Why do you forward my emails to a third party?"

That last bit is bolded because I think its really fucking unfair to deliver my exchange of emails to a third party who happens to be the leader of our whole photography course.

What pisses me off a lot here is the total utter un professional dickheadness that we have to face every fucking day of uni. Scanners dont work, printers dont work or they are not just calibrated ( to artsy people things like this dont really seem to matter ), content of some the courses is amazingly retarded. As an example I could mention a digital darkroom module I took last year and ended up getting a 2.1 with only going in twice and doing all my projects in an hour and a half. Anyway, they taught people how to put text on photos. and you call that fucking digital darkroom? We "designed" CD covers. Designing CD covers? photography students? what the hell? There was absolutely nothing about how to control contrasts, masking, colours, sharpening... everything that actually HAS TO DO with photography. If you can put text on a picture before taking up a university course in photography, are you sure youre in the right place? I dont mean to diss anyone, it just streches my nerves to see some people having to go and pay 5k€ for getting taught how to do the simpliest things in the universe.

Then. all this bullshit about something they call research. they, at least some of the tutors, want us to read shitloads of books by early 20th century artists whose work might be really irrelevant to our own. I understand how they want to introduce people to a lot of previous artists work, but they apparently want this to be a conscious process. Hell with it, since when is inspiration a conscious process? its like you think "now i look at this photograph and get inspired by it." no, you go "wow im happy i found this, i might do something like this at some point" and then stick a photocopy in your folder or something.
They can understand the idea of a student with loads of previous 'research' that is all stored up in the head instead of a notebook that says "colour photography course" on top. they wont accept that I start my work with a visual idea. They cant undestand that I want to create good looking work that i can proudly show around in my portfolio instead of shit photos with pages and pages of artsy bullshit that is supposed to change the world and stop wars. come on.

Then this. no support for your own work. if you try and discuss it, maybe even try and open some public debate, they shut you up and tell you to go fuck yourself, pretty much. i thought that was one of the corner stones of universities and intellectual world, but it seems not. critizism is not allowed.

Im suprised if anyone can be arsed to read this, if you did please leave a note!

Anyway, tomorrow is going to be a cool day:

I get to shoot some portraits with either a hasselblad 6x6 or a fuji 6x7 rangerfinder. ( they said at uni photo gear store i would need to get an insurance for the h-blad even though no one ever needed one before ). the rangerfinder is good, but the images i have in my head are square format, and the RF only has a fixed lens at 90mm, whereas with the h-blad you can get a 150mm one and they go down to 2.8 instead of the 3.5 or something on the fujis.
I ordered five rolls of 120 Portra 160 NC film to shoot on, never used that before but im expecting it to be good, like the VC version is.

pretty much the kind of portraits im going for, except they going to be 6x6

The people ima shoot are DJ's playing at a party tomorrow night.

Ill be taking some photos there as well! Im taking out a couple of Metz flash units with umbrellas, setting them up on two different sides of the dance floor or the lounge area and fire them off with a nikon d80 and a radio trigger, im expecting it to be pretty cool. too bad the lens goes only to f3.5 so not much ambient light there then... unless I crank the ISO up to 1600 or something :(

alright.

If you read this all or at least bits of it, leave me a note to cheer me up !

cheers and have a good photos!

P.S.

If you ever decide to go study photography in a university, think twice. or more. go see the university. SPEAK WITH THE STUDENTS. then think again. ask to see work previous students have made, thatll tell you what kind of shit they will teach you and if they try to push you through the same model.
if you decide to study in university, remember to keep your head and push forward working on your stuff nevertheless what they tell you, and try to find innovative people who are more like you.

my 5p.