This article originally appeared in the November 2014 Issue of Southern Exposure, the magazine of the Southeast PPA District, page 13. View it here.
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We’re gonna break my number one rule here and use the word “passion.” It’s pretty much a given fact that I’m passionate about print competition. I enter it, work in print rooms, teach classes in it and just have an all-around addiction going. I firmly believe that it’s one of the most intensive and beneficial learning processes available.
I have colleagues, associates, friends and fellow organization members who are as passionate as I. We seem to draw to each other, like a zombie invasion. In a way, we’re the geeks of our organizations. And we’re very happy to have others participate in the geekness.
Image competition is fun. When you get past the stress and uncertainty and you’re sitting in the audience waiting for your image to spin, the excitement is palpable. I’ve sat in the darkness and felt both joy and disappointment in my scores, but the overall experience was always positive.
And I love it when competition is positive for others. Especially when their hard work is rewarded with merit level scores, certificates and trophies. The road getting to that point can be difficult and it can take a number of years before the first merit is earned. By the time you’ve hit that level, you’ve gone through a number or trials by fire and learned many lessons the hard way.
And then you win. And you begin to collect an array of certificates, plaques and trophies. And sometimes things go a little bit haywire.
Sometimes we grow to expect that we will be winners. And when we aren’t, we have that disappointment to deal with. And sometimes we don’t deal with it very well. At all.
Sometimes we blame it on ourselves. Sometimes we blame it on the judges. Sometimes we blame it on the competition process. And sometimes, well, sometimes the person who had nothing to do with our entry at all gets blamed. The “winner”.
I love excelling, however, the whole “competition” part of competition can be a little awkward. I love rewarding outstanding images as well as talented makers. I love applauding for photographers of the year and others with notable results. I love scores and appreciate the scoring categories that the PPA uses that help me determine the level at which I’m competing.
But, I do not love seeing the quest for trophies eclipse the quest for improvement. I do not love seeing rivalries become a bit more personal when the final case scores are tabulated. And I do not love the word “robbed.”
As a print competition education advocate, teaching the ins and outs of how to enter competition and prepare your entries is the easy part. Teaching competitors how to handle the emotional part of competition… not so much. Both the highs and the lows need handled with a bit more professionalism in some cases.
I don’t know what the answer is, but the problem weighs heavy on my heart.