Standing in for the Competition Secretary
With Roger Dye about to be away for a while, I was "asked" by some of the Committee (who had clearly already made up their minds) to perform some of the tasks of the Competition Secretary for the 1st Quarterly competition to be held on 26th September.
The tasks were to collect the prints and slides and associated forms when they were handed in on the 1st night of the season (and later when necessary); evolve spreadsheets from the contents of the forms for various purposes; agree with the judge how he would work on the night and how many of the prints and slides he could handle, and where necessary omit priority 5 and even priority 4 work; sort the remaining prints and slides into order for presentation; check them all one by one against the spreadsheets to ensure that all details matched and to confirm that the order was correct, test-projecting the slides to ensure that they were the right way round and dust-free; bring in all the work ready for the judge to see in the right order; call out the titles, and then record the scores as they were announced in the spreadsheets and also by pen and paper as backup; then later sort these spreadsheets, and evolve others for "slide worker" and "print worker" and "worker of the year"; and send these to Peter Redford and Bill Chadband for publication on the website and in Focus. Roger supplied 6 pages of notes, lots of forms and sticky labels, and a CD with several previous spreadsheets on, as a "starter kit".
Easy Peasy.
I had earlier suggested a modification to cater for anomalies in previous years. (Very unwise to suggest extra work before making sure that someone else was going to do it!) The members of NCPS traditionally ensure that new members who join on the first day of the season start off at a disadvantage in accumulating points throughout the competitions. Hand-in day is the first day of the season and requires a competition number, so new members couldn't get work into the 1st Quarterly competition. Presumably this was just in case they were too good! (Disguising the names, Barry X, Sandra Y, and Alan Z, had all been impacted by this cunning ploy). This year, we allowed new members to hand in work late. There was little need for this, but it is a useful feature for future years.
Several members applied the creativity they show in their photographs to their interpretation of the rules for board sizes and the instructions for filling in the forms. Submitting a print that wouldn't fit in our boxes was a nice touch. Having prints without a competition number on the back with titles that didn't match those on the forms was a particularly well-considered challenge! (Slide workers tended to be boringly conformant). I've summarised this creativity later.
I eventually made it through the minefield with respect for all competition secretaries, past, present and future! It was necessary to omit all priority 4s and 5s, to bring the total (prints + slides) within the range 80 - 100 that experience shows gives judges a reasonable amount of time to discuss each work. (There is typically about 90 - 100 minutes available for judging). Our judge, George Steele, pointed out that where necessary, for example some L&CPU events, he could award points within seconds with no commentary at all! But that is hardly helpful to us, and as someone who joined NCPS to improve my photography I appreciated his constructive commentary.
Checklist
Here is a checklist, for people handing in work for quarterly competitions, for making life difficult for the Competition Secretary. (If the judge wants to see work in advance, some of these techniques will make things difficult for the judge too). Those without malicious intent can modify this checklist to make life easier instead!
- Use old or non-standard forms that list slides before prints, or don't say whether they refer to slides or prints. This maximises the chance that the spreadsheets will be filled in incorrectly. (There are separate spreadsheets for each category).
- Put incorrect or shortened titles on the forms, so that the titles recorded in the spreadsheets, which are used for a number of purposes, are not the true titles of the work. An obvious variation is to combine this with bad handwriting.
- Omit the competition number from the work. This makes it hard to match the work to the spreadsheet which has to be done for a number of reasons. An obvious variation is to have a few different numbers written on the back of the work, any of which might be a competition number. And if, in addition, the title on the work isn't exactly the same as that on the form - jackpot! Let's see him sort that one out!
- Have a print's mount that exceeds the maximum size permitted by the rules. It may not even fit in our boxes! But even if it does, it may not be easy to get fingers either side of it to lift it out of the box. Small mounts, even if valid under the rules, cause a number of problems of their own.
- Have prints that aren't listed on the forms at all! (What is supposed to be done with them?) The reverse, of having non-existent work listed on the forms, was probably too evil (or too imaginative) for anyone to have thought of on this occasion.
- Some trivial things add a bit of flavour: write upside down on the print; have prints whose backing boards start to peel off; or have slide mounts that fall apart.
(Must stop now - I have an appointment to audition for "Grumpy Old Men").
Editor's Note:
Barry submitted this article in good time for the previous FOCUS, but, in keeping with the sprit of the article, it got lost and had to be resubmitted!!