ADEX2024 VOO live judging: congrats to PT Hirschfield!!

[Nicolas]

The competition organisers had prepared a short-list of entries in each category, and the jury were asked to score these finalists from 1 to 10.

For each category, the jury were first shown all finalists, and then each finalist image/video was shown again, for them to cast a vote.

For most entries, there were no discussions, but jury members occasionally made a comment to explain/discuss how they perceived the entry. The subject of animal manipulation and ethics came up often. With some judges down-voting an image because they felt there was a fair chance of subject harassment, based on their knowledge of the species. For example, a pygmy seahorse photographed on a coral whole polyps were all closed posed concerns. On other photos, jury recognised they couldn’t be 100% sure whether there was interference or not.

The key take-away: you can de-risk your submission by entering non-controversial photos.

The photo which raised the longest discussion (over 3 minutes!) amongst jury members was PT’s (don’t mind the poor audio from my iPhone…):

https://vimeo.com/934680304?share=copy

It started with William Tan, saying that this could be a fully ‘authentic’ behaviour but he’s also known of people feeding a blue-ring to fish for the sake of a photo. Tobias Friedrich said the behaviour was fantastic, but aesthetically non-perfect, and whilst he acknowledged there was probably no way to take a nicer shot in these conditions, he down-voted the photo a little, and then the debate went on… to eventually make it the category winner!

[Nicolas]

Once all category winners had been chosen, they were shown again to the jury for a final round of live-scoring, which resulted in picking the overall winner of the US$ 10,000 prize (including a shiny Seacam housing).

This was awarded to a Singapore-based photographer, who had won the “image of the year” category with a classic but effective clownfish & eggs portrait.

Then, the 2nd in that category (Miguel Ramirez) will be receiving the category prizes.

Here is a video of that final round of judging where you see jury members scoring:

https://vimeo.com/934684025?share=copy

[Pink]

Thank you so much for posting these observations and videos, @NicolasREMY . This has been beyond helpful for me to understand judges’ thoughts on this image. This image and I have been on quite a heart-wrenching journey since I shot it at Bass Point on 7 June 2023 (completely without any interference from me – a vegan who would never even feed an urchin to a blue groper, let alone an octopus to a fish!)

Long story short, I was gobsmacked by witnessing the behaviour and fluking the shot (one of 10 images I fired off as the fish swam around madly with the octopus it had just caught but had trouble swallowing). When I got home from the dive, I could only find one distant shot of a wrasse eating a blue ring on Google, so I knew I had something possibly no-one had ever captured before.

I rarely enter my photographs in any competitions other than Ocean Art where I have typically won and placed my categories in the years I’ve entered (usually Compact Behaviour). Knowing the photo was rare, I also entered it in several other competitions.

Nothing. Not even commended. I couldn’t understand why. Truthfully, I wondered if it was time for me to give up entering competitions altogether.

I have never seen a blue ring photo place or win in a photo competition. I suspected it was because the judges were nervous that a a blue ring flashing blue was violation of the ‘No Stressed Animals’ policy most competitions have.

Hearing the judges live comments has given me a real insight into why every other competition avoided even commending the image, despite its rarity. Competitions do not want to be seen to be controversial, awarding images which might need to be disqualified if unethical practices are suspected or proved. (One major underwater photo competition is currently in the process of disqualifying its most recent Grand Winner.)

I’m so glad these judges did a thorough forensic on my image, ultimately recognising the signs that the fish and the blue ring had done battle and that I had only snapped the natural behaviour I had seen.

I’ll unpack all of this more fully in an upcoming article. Thanks so much @NicolasREMY for keeping me updated from Singapore as the judging unfolded live, and for sharing these invaluable competition notes with us. May I please request your permission Nicolas to submit the live judging photos you sent through to me with my upcoming article for Dive Log Australasia? Many thanks in advance. I’ll also quote the judges comments in my article.

I’m happy to answer any questions anyone might have about how this image was made.

[Nicolas]

and yes you’re welcome to include the photo of your photo in the DiveLog article 🙂

[Pink]

@NicolasREMY After transcribing the judges’ comments, I think maybe you’ve misinterpreted William Tan’s comment (‘It started with William Tan, saying that this could be a fully ‘authentic’ behaviour but he’s also known of people feeding a blue-ring to fish for the sake of a photo.’)

I believe William is saying the two times he’s witnessed the behaviour, it’s just been impossible to photograph. Here’s his comment:

<font color=”#000000″><font face=”Georgia, serif”><font size=”4″>‘The two times I’ve seen fish eating blue rings, the
first time it happened in front of me. It took a bite and then spit
out again. Then took a bite and spit out again, you know, it’s moving
all the time. It is impossible to shoot. </font></font></font>

<font color=”#000000″><font face=”Georgia, serif”><font size=”4″>The
second time … I couldn’t even lift up the camera in time to shoot
and it was gone. So this is very difficult to shoot. I have to agree
that this is not a beautiful picture but this is very difficult to
shoot.’</font></font></font>

[Pink]

@NicolasREMY Watching the live judging for Best in Show, there was some avoidable confusion for the judges which resulted in my image receiving two different scores.

2:20 – My score 48 ie 6, 6, 5, 6, 8, 9,
9

3:00 – My score 46 ie 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, 9,
7

Due to the confusion, my image lost 2 points on the second pass.

In this particular competition, this point discrepency would have made no difference, as the
winning image for Best in Show scored 65 points.

However in a closer competition, it
could have been the difference between winning and losing Best
Picture of the Year.

I’m wondering whether this might be
useful feedback to the organisers so that any future judging
process can be streamlined to avoid any such discrepency.

Such issues in the future might lead to Best in Show having to later be retracted if the scoring process can reliably be called into question by those privy to the live judging?

In a competition which promotes 2nd place to first place in the category from which Best in Show is awarded, the reliability of the scoring process at every stage seems especially important.

[Nicolas]

Hi PT,

I hadn’t noticed that scoring discrepancy, will mention it to the organisers.

I guess this is a challenge of live contests, they made every efforts to be careful though: the emcee was reading the scores, one person was entering them in an excel file while another one was double-checking. But human mistakes/typo do happen when things happen fast with overall excitement of the show (the seats were all occupied and people were standing-up behind)..

Congrats again 🙂

[Nicolas]

I’ve just seen the organisers are now posting official results in the form of posters with winning images and prizes. @pink here’s yours!

Interestingly, it looks like the ex-overall winning shot has been disqualified but I haven’t seen any information on why. As luck would have it, that same photographer was also the winner of the envrionmental category, which is now declared best of show. So the grand prizes just moves from left hand to right hand 🙂