2020 PSNZ Honours

2020 Honours Assessments

By Bruce Girdwood FPSNZ

THE HONOURS BOARD would like to congratulate all PSNZ members who have been awarded PSNZ Honours this year. We appreciate it has been a tough year with the COVID lockdown and the need to keep ourselves and the team in Invercargill safe. We are very appreciative of your patience as we have worked towards assessing your applications.

This year I chaired my first Honours Board and we welcomed Paul Byrne FPSNZ ARPS AFIAP and Helen McLeod FPSNZ GPSA ARPS onto the Honours Board. On Wednesday afternoon we met to induct our new members, to refresh ourselves on the honours guidelines and make sure we all agreed on our approach to the assessment. Our objective was to take a positive approach to the assessment and to be as consistent as we could be. We agreed to take all the time we needed to assess submissions and to talk whenever we needed to.

The Honours Board developed a great vibe very quickly and we worked well together to assess your portfolios. We had many deep discussions about your work and in the end we all felt comfortable that we had been consistent and that your successes reflected a good standard, respected our existing and past Honours holders and rewarded good photography. We do not believe we raised the bar, and sought to reward those that demonstrated broad skill in photographic craft for the Licentiate, broad based advanced skills in the Associate and mastery of photographic art for the Fellowship.

The Honours Board: Bruce Girdwood (chair), Stephanie Forrester, (secretary) Meg Lipscombe, Tracey Scott, Bevan Tulett, Helen McLeod and Paul Byrne

Once again the Licentiate applicants wowed us with their range of skills. Consistent with the guidelines, we looked for the demonstration of photographic craft in a diverse, cohesive set demonstrating your ability in a range of situations such as lighting, environment, genre and camera settings. Overall we felt that the applicants had a pretty good grasp of the guidelines and were doing well to put cohesive sets together.

For the Associate we looked for the same but at an advanced level. Overall, we did not feel that Associate applicants demonstrated advanced skills, with many submissions showing a lack of understanding of the basics of photography and post processing. We also found that Associate applicants are trying to create a cohesive portfolio by photographing a theme. While we have no issues with themes we do still look for the diversity of your photographic skills, which very often did not show in the themed sets. Instead, these sets were constructed using a theme with a limited range of photographic skills on show when we are looking for your broad application of skills at an advanced level. The Associate is more akin to an advanced Licentiate than a mini Fellowship.

We have also noticed over the years that people who have already achieved their Licentiate are more likely to be successful at the Associate. We would strongly recommend that applicants start with the Licentiate before attempting the Associate.

Sadly, this year we did not award any Fellowships. A key to the success of a Fellowship is a demonstration of your mastery of photography through a thesislike approach. For this we look for a highly developed exploration of your subject, an interpretation which is yours and reflects your style. This year, we saw some amazing photography but the sets were limited in their development of an idea or concept. Often the artist statement excited us but was not reflected in the set. We would like to assure you that we did not look for reasons not to accept applications; rather our approach was to find reasons why we should accept each application. We tried our best to reward good photography in line with the guidelines and we will provide feedback to those that were not successful. We are sensitive people and, as fellow photographers, we fully understand the amount of effort, love and care you put into your work. It is never easy to turn down an application and we do not do so lightly.

We will complete the feedback letters in the next week or two and then we will make ourselves available for a follow-up conversation if required. We will also be posting all the successful sets on the PSNZ website in the near future.

Thank you to everyone for trusting us to assess your work. Congratulations if you were successful and we hope that if you were not that you will take feedback in the constructive spirit in which it will be given and never give up. For future applications please read the guidelines carefully and look to show us your creativity in line with those guidelines.

I would like to say a huge thank you to the Honours Board team of Tracey Scott FPSNZ AFIAP FNZIPP, Bevan Tulett FPSNZ, Meg Lipscombe FPSNZ, Helen McLeod and Paul Byrne for being such a great team to work with. Sadly we said goodbye to Meg this year and we are grateful that Tracey has agreed to stay on another year to keep continuity on the Board. To Stephanie Forrester APSNZ and her amazing Southland crew, thank you so much for the hard work you all put in to make sure the whole process ran smoothly and for your awesome Southland hospitality. It was also great to have our President, Moira Blincoe LPSNZ, to observe us at work. We look forward to doing it all over again - in the summer next time!

And here are some comments from some members of the Honours Board:

Paul Byrne:

“I was pleased to see the respect board members showed towards all the applicants and their work. There were no time constraints and each portfolio was viewed for as long as it took for the board to make an appraisal and formulate a consensus agreement about the work presented.

“I was surprised by the number of applicants whose portfolios indicated that the photographer had not read, or failed to comprehend and follow, the PSNZ guidelines. For example, at Associateship level the candidate should be able to show ‘… advanced techniques across a wide range of situations and conditions to demonstrate advanced photographic skills.’ This aspect was overlooked time and again, with photographers choosing to demonstrate one skill set repeated throughout a portfolio of almost identical images. The other aspect which seemed generally to cause some difficulty was the aspect of ‘flow’ between images to make a cohesive portfolio set.” Helen McLeod:

“This being my first Honours Board meeting, I was excited to see the various image submissions. These were assessed by evaluating the demonstration of photographic ability, the assembly of images into a cohesive portfolio, and the presentation of diversity. It became evident to me that it was the lack of understanding of diversity that let a number of submissions down. If you think about it there are various ways that diversity can be shown in your submission - subject, genre, colour, focal length and lighting, to name a few examples. To obtain a distinction we want to see that you are a competent photographer with an understanding of the functions of your camera, and some knowledge of image processing. Keeping things simple and showing diversity can be the best way. Take care, and keep smiling!”

Tracey Scott:

“It is always a pleasure working alongside such a diverse group on the Honours Board, each with their own speciality, giving the board a wellrounded perspective on what is put before us to assess.”

National Convention 2021 Save the Date: 15 - 18 April 2021 Christchuch