RE: What have I said to the Judges???

["James Purchase" <jpurch@interlog.com>]

> Are (or have) the judges been made aware that the quality of the
> photos are
> to have absolutely no factor in scoring?  If the photos suck that bad, the
> judges should base their scoring on what they actually can see,
> right?

To date, I haven't said anything to any of the Judges - I wanted to wait
until we have our complete compliment of Judges on board and say what I have
to say once, and to them all at the same time. It looks like we aren't even
going to get the courtesy of a response from Amano (I asked Neil to attempt
to contact him one last time, following his initial attempt and my several
emails and 2 physical letters).

Last month I asked for further input from the group as to who we might next
approach but received no responses, so I'm content to leave our panel at
four confirmed Judges. (in other words, "Speak now, of forever hold your
peace.")

Both Karen and Neil will have read the entire Proposal which was submitted
to the AGA MC - it contained our Judging Guidelines which point out that the
focus of the event is on Aquascaping and not on the quality of the
photographs. Before the Judges are let lose on the submitted images, I will
ask then as a group to read the Judging Guidelines and suggest that they
might want to read all of the material which is on the web site (it contains
the full text which was approved by the AGA when they passed the Proposal. I
will ask that they follow the Judging Guidelines as we have set forth and
then I intend to let them do their thing.

Should they have any questions, I'm sure that either Erik or I can answer
them, but I don't intend to be looking over their shoulders. I don't think
that any of them would appreciate that and I'm not competent to tell any of
them "how" to judge. I think that the four people we have as Judges will be
more than capable and understanding of the fact that our focus here is on
the aquascapes.

But I think that we all have to realize (and I would think that any entrant
who had bothered to read the entire set of guidelines would also realize)
that given two aquascapes of equal physical merit, if one is poorly
presented in fuzzy, overexposed photos while the other one is portrayed in
beautiful, sharp photos, there is only going to be ONE winner and I couldn't
fault the judges for picking the better photographed aquascape (at least, if
I was a Judge, I know which of the two I'd award the ribbon to).

The amount of care and pride an entrant displays in photographing and
presenting his or her aquascape is going to play _some_ part in this I'm
sure, and that is not something that we have any control over.

James Purchase
Toronto

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