International Print Judging

This week Mark will be in Daytona Beach, Florida with the Professional Photographers of America's International Print and Album judging. Mark and Jennifer are both Affiliated Judges for the PPA and Mark is also a Jury Chair.

Each year photographers can enter four prints or albums to be judged at their state or regional print competition, which then go onto to the national judging. Entries are critiqued on twelve elements such as lighting, technique, creativity, composition and story telling. If your print scores an 80 or higher (on a 100 point scale), you have earned one print exhibition merit. At the national level, you then have the opportunity to have your merited print enter the Loan Collection, which is a high honor and is considered to be the 'best of the best.' When your merited print is accepted into the Loan Collection, you can earn another print exhibition merit for a possible total earned in one year of eight merits. That is if you merit and loan all four entries. This then determines Photographer of the Year for PPA.

It takes 13 print merits plus twelve additional merits from speaking or volunteering to earn your Master of Photography Degree. It takes an additional 25 merits to earn your Craftsman Degree. To earn your Imaging Excellence Degree you have to have 13 or more Loan Collection exhibition merits.

Looooong story short, we are both crossing our fingers this year for two more Loan entries each. With those two Loan Collection merits, Mark will earn his Imaging Excellence Bar, which is for 13 Loan merits above the 13 original Loans needed for the Imaging Excellence Degree ("rare air" as our friend Helen says). Jennifer will earn her Imaging Excellence Degree just two years after earning both her Masters and Craftsman Degrees...pretty cool!

So whats all this mean? Nothing....other than we like continually striving to better ourselves. Having our worked critiqued by International Jurors helps us stay current and is truly the best form of continuing education for photographers.

Keep your fingers crossed for us and the four brides whose albums we entered! One spread from each of their albums is shown below.

Neal/Hoffman...Dayton Art Institute

Riggsby/Munson...The Officer's Club

Berg/Hurewitz...The Schuster Center for Performing Arts

Wolientz/Feldman...The Hilton at Easton in Columbus