A rural based TPS member contacted me last night saying she had not seen the proposed changes to the TPS awards and pointscore system. I have put the proposal in the body of this email. If you have already seen this and voted, please accept my apologies for adding to the volume of messages in your in-box. As we can’t have a physical meeting and have a show of hands, we are asking for you to vote by sending an email to the president, indicating either yes or no, along with your name.
TPS Aggregate Competition Award System
Introduction
TPS changed its competition year from a mid year to mid year to a January to December cycle when it became apparent that the difficulty in obtaining non-TPS PSQ accredited judges was due to TPS being out of step with most other clubs. In the 2020, a near 50:50 TPS: non-TPS number of judges has been achieved.
This highlighted another problem – marked differences between the two sets of judges – see graph below
Reasons for the lower scores from non TPS judging could be:
- Lack of familiarity with our scoring system
- A mis-understanding of the Accepted award – in national or international competition this is a high award (often 25% or less are “accepted”, whereas in TPS, this is a poor image scoring only 1 point.)
- Not reading and comprehending our current guidelines.
To address these possibilities, a working group comprising the TPS committee, senior judges and 2 members (1 B grade, 1 A grade), met on 15 August 2020 to review the TPS awards and point score system.
Graham Harris undertook a review of the systems used by other clubs. The meeting agreed that the current TPS system was wordy and prescriptive and titles of the awards were uncommon. Many other clubs have fewer awards. The meeting also agreed that the terms Accepted and Rejected would no longer be used. Accepted has been deleted, and Rejected changed to Out of Category.
The following is based on Graham’s subsequent suggestions and has been modified following a discussion by TPS committee members on 24 August 2020.
Points to note:
- The proposal is to use the most commonly used terms for the awards – Honour, etc as below.
- The number of awards has been reduced but points remain the same. Hence Honour = six points, as is the TPS Gold award.
- Accepted and Bronze are deleted, and Rejected changed to Out of Category.
Awards
Alice Black Award – this is the image of the night in the opinion of the judge. This image is one that has significant impact for the judge as a result of technique, composition or story telling. It can be chosen from any grade or medium (print or digital)
Honour – This is awarded to an exceptional photograph which has impact, is technically excellent, well composed, shows originality and artistry, and has few if any flaws.
Merit – This is awarded to a very good photograph which meets high technical standards and also shows originality, artistry and good composition. Any flaws present are very minor.
Highly Commended – This is awarded to a good photograph with good technique, artistry and minor flaws.
Commended – This is awarded to a photograph which may have significant flaws that detract from the image and can be overcome or amended.
Out of Category – A photo that does not fit the criteriafor the competition is given this award.
A possible awards and points system for TPS could be:
| Points | |
| Honour | 6 |
| Merit | 4 |
| Highly Commended | 3 |
| Commended | 2 |
| Out of Category | 0 |
In addition Graham suggested assigning additional points to the image awarded the Alice Black Award – for example 2 additional points on top of the award received. This would be like a “jackpot” score, but at the end of year competition, the Alice Black of the Year could not have any point score as these have already been decided after the previous monthly competition. This is endorsed by the majority of the TPS committee. It will need to be added to EOY point scores manually, as there won’t be an automatic means of recording this on MPC, but a record of each image is kept and filed for the EOY competition.
Point scores and grading
The August 24 meeting is generally not in favour of grading by folio appraisal, but recognises its role for outstanding or highly proficient photographers. Such a folio requires being assessed by a panel, and the time involved could be onerous if significant numbers of members chose this option.
Instead, the meeting recommended an average point score system for movement between grades. A cursory examination of the pointscores to date shows that a maximum of 24 images could be submitted in the competition year to date (at August 2020). The maximum possible score is 6 golds x 24 images = 144. The top scoring competitor has 111 points, followed by a few with scores in the 90s. This means our top scoring entrants are attaining around 2/3 of the points on offer, and one has achieved ¾.
There has been further analysis on 2019 and 2020 – see attached below. These comprise 5 competitions in 2019 and 6 in 2020.
It is recommended that the % of total points attained for movement between grades be as follows:
| % of total competition year points attained | B grade to A grade | A grade to Salon grade | Movement between future levels in Salon grade |
| % | 55 | 60 | 65 |
Points to note:
- Grading by points provides incentive to enter the maximum number of images in a competition year.
- Grading by points rewards consistency of effort by members.
- Grading by points removes variability from “chance” or random effects based on awards only – i.e. a certain number of medal types.
- It may be possible to consider a combination of awards achieved and pointscore when considering grading, but it should not rely on awards alone.
- The points system starts at 2 out of six, rather than 1 out of six, and the wording of the Commended (2 points) award is intended to provide a clear separation between it and higher awards, and for the judge to only give this award to images where the first “impact” on viewing is technical error, rather than other qualities of the image. An example might be an image out of focus, overly dark, burnt out, etc.
| A grade 2019 | 2019 | 2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2020 | |
| No of entries | Point score | % of total 90 pts | No of entries | Pointscore | % of total 108 pts | |
| 15 | 61 | 67.8 | 18 | 62 | 57.7 | |
| 15 | 59 | 65.6 | 18 | 65 | 60.2 | |
| 15 | 59 | 65.6 | 18 | 59 | 54.6 | |
| 15 | 56 | 62.2 | 15 | 40 | 37 | |
| 15 | 54 | 60 | 18 | 44 | 40.7 | |
| 15 | 51 | 56.7 | 18 | 52 | 48.1 | |
| 15 | 51 | 56.7 | 18 | 52 | 48.1 | |
| 15 | 50 | 55.6 | 18 | 43 | 39.8 | |
| 15 | 50 | 55.6 | 15 | 37 | 34.3 | |
| 15 | 49 | 54.4 | 18 | 57 | 52.8 | |
| 15 | 48 | 53.3 | 15 | 45 | 41.7 |
| B Grade 2019 | 2019 | 2019 | 2020 | 2020 | 2020 |
| No of entries | Point score | % of total 90 pts | No of entries | Pointscore | % of total 108 pts |
| 15 | 60 | 66.7 | 18 | 54 | 50 |
| 15 | 57 | 63.3 | 18 | 57 | 52.8 |
| 15 | 54 | 60 | 18 | 38 | 35.2 |
| 15 | 52 | 57.8 | 18 | 53 | 49.1 |
| 15 | 52 | 57.8 | 18 | 47 | 43.5 |
| 15 | 51 | 56.7 | 18 | 40 | 37 |
| 15 | 50 | 55.6 | 18 | 50 | 46.3 |
| 15 | 48 | 53.3 | 15 | 42 | 38.9 |
| 14 | 51 | 56.7 | 18 | 60 | 55.6 |
| 12 | 54 | 60 | 18 | 71 | 65.7 |
| Salon grade 2020 | Score | %Score/108 Total Pts | 2019 | Score | %score/90 total pts |
| 18 | 87 | 80.6 | 15 | 73 | 81 |
| 18 | 67 | 62 | 15 | 65 | 72.2 |
| 18 | 65 | 60.2 | 15 | 57 | 63.3 |
| 18 | 60 | 55.6 | 15 | 63 | 70 |
| 18 | 53 | 49.1 | 15 | 64 | 71.1 |
| 18 | 51 | 47.2 | 15 | 60 | 66.7 |
| 15 | 63 | 58.3 | 15 | 58 | 64.4 |
| 15 | 57 | 52.8 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 12 | 51 | 47.2 | 9 | 40 | 44.4 |
