Thoughts from the other side of the LRPS table

Author: Stewart Wall MA ARPS PGCE

Stewart is a photographer and RPS assessor. For AYWMC he has written an account of what it is like on the other side of the table at an RPS assessment day.

I was interested to read Will and Hilary Dickson’s account of their Royal Photographic Society (RPS) licentiate assessment day recently, since I was one of the assessors on that day. I should like to expand on some of Will and Hilary’s points and add a few of my own, which should be read as being my own and not official comments of the RPS.

How do we assess?

At licentiate level, the RPS does not ask for a statement of intent which would help the assessors know what the photographer was trying to achieve. Instead, the applicant must embed the criteria – which is based on exactly the aspects that A Year With My Camera teaches – camera craft.

Like all the other assessors, I am not 'judging' based on whether I like the images. Instead, I assess to the RPS licentiate criteria. These are based on camera craft skills and assessing everything leads to two over-riding questions:

Does the applicant appear to be competent with the camera?
Can the applicant use the appropriate skills for each subject matter?

‘Appropriate’ is an important concept. It might mean, for example, that if there is an image of a speeding car, we consider whether the photographer has used an appropriate shutter speed to show movement.

Of course, we are human and we are not at war with applicants. We are looking to recommend if we can. Secretly, we do of course get moved by panels, and images within panels. Recently, I was watching 'The Best of The Voice’ and Will.i.am was talking about how sometimes a singer's voice can be so good it strikes straight through to his heart. Sometimes, as I sit in my chair ten feet from the panel of images at the start of an assessment, a panel immediately grabs me in terms of its layout design and selection of images; to re-appropriate some of Barthes’ academic words about photography, on occasion a panel as a whole emits a sort of eidolon, a spectacle that I immediately appreciate and secretly 'like'; the panel has punctum (Barthes’ word) for me. Then, as I walk up for a closer inspection, I am looking for good camera craft appropriately used to communicate the subject of the image so that I can recommend.

However, the opposite of the above also occurs. I can be sitting ten feet from the images and a panel emits no studium (Barthes’ word) for me at all. That does not matter since my personal preferences and bias have no effect on my final recommendation. As I walk up to the images for closer inspection, other than to question my own lack of initial enthusiasm, my intent is to find appropriate camera craft skills that will lead me to recommend the panel. However – and this is paramount – if I feel a panel lacks appropriate camera skills, I cannot recommend it since that would be unfair to the applicant. Without appropriate camera skills they have potentially not reached a level in photography that might make photography so much more interesting for them.

Sometimes, I will be unsure, and I will ask, or listen to my colleagues and we have great debates. One example of this occurred when I was viewing a portrait image and on that occasion my bias got in my way; I was viewing the image as a professional photographer, but another assessor with a fine art background saw the lighting as appropriate and I accepted that point and the applicant was successful.

With Will and Hilary’s licentiate applications, from ten feet away I was immediately impressed. I enjoyed seeing their cleverly planned layouts, the positioning of the images and, in their cases, the variety of subjects. I wanted to be able to find evidence of camera craft so that I could recommend them.

Will Dickson’s successful LRPS panel

Hilary Dickson’s successful LRPS panel

Variety of subjects

It is important to mention that there does not need to be a variety of subjects; if all a photographer engages with, for example, is street photography then that is fine, but as already mentioned we do need to see a variety of camera skills and a lack of repetition.

At licentiate, the applicant has ten opportunities to demonstrate a good level of camera skills: one photograph of a bird sitting on a stick taken with a long lens at a wide aperture from a distance that makes the background blurry demonstrates skill. A second image showing the same simply wastes a tenth of the opportunities and does not inform the assessors of anything new.

Print or digital?

Applicants do not have to do a print panel; digital files can be submitted for assessment. Whilst the need for a variety of evidence of camera skills remain, the way the applicant presents them changes depending on whether they submit a print or a digital panel.

I always think print panels are like the way a newspaper designer plans a page, whereas images for screen are sequenced like a film. In Hilary’s print panel, she has a cockerel looking to our right. By placing that image on the left of the panel, the bird is looking into the rest of the panel and so it is easy for the viewer to look at the rest of the images. The other end of that panel row is even more clever, in that she crops the bowl of tomatoes in half to stop the viewer’s eye travelling any further, and then places two tomatoes at an angle to make the viewer’s eye travel down to the next row. That is excellent design.

Burnt highlights

The burnt-out highlights on Hilary’s tomatoes did concern one of the assessors, and it should be remembered why there is a panel of assessors rather than just one – because people have different specialisms. I am a social documentary street photographer and compose using geometry and shape often created by light. I saw the highlights – which could be seen as technically incorrect burnt-out highlights – as an important part of the composition to reinforce Hilary’s design to move the viewer to the row below. I enjoy movement being created in an image by such things.

After having one of those debates I mentioned, everyone agreed that on this occasion the burnt-out highlights were appropriate and not seen as a fault as they often can be.

There is another important aspect to understanding assessors, and that is we all have different experiences, and our experiences potentially change how we react to images. For example, I have studied the work of the New Topographics photographers so when I saw Will’s repeated image of garage doors I immediately thought of Bernd & Hilla Becher’s 1974 image entitled Pitheads. From my seat, I was initially unsure whether it was going to be suitable in a licentiate panel because it looked as though it could just be a shot of someone else’s artwork and not demonstrate camera skill. However, when I got closer, the design and placement of the doors, and the storytelling of the changes in industry and the use of the motorcycle was strong for me and the way he approached it from a camera craft angle was appropriate and matched Hilla’s approach of using the same camera position from the same height and distance from the subject.

Colour management

From their post, it reads as though both Hilary and Will got an awful lot out of the process of studying for a licentiate application and along the way learned about colour management. I am sure that was an excellent journey, but for those who want to save a little money, there is another way. Before digital, when we shot on film and did not have screens on our cameras and enlargers, we used to make test prints, which we then reviewed and made changes to the enlarger and chemistry to make another print. This method still works with creating digital prints.

Membership of LRPS

A question often asked is: why do I have to remain a member to keep my distinctions? My personal view is that if you leave the RPS, nobody can remove the reality that you gained a licentiateship, but by gaining it, you become a licentiate member of the RPS. This is very different to having letters after your name. For example, my MA was assessed by the University of Hertfordshire, but once I had finished the course, I no longer had access to the university. I hope both Hilary and Will continue to engage with the RPS and get much more out of it.

Final thoughts

To conclude, while looking at a panel of images, I do not feel I am judging them but assessing the photographer’s technical ability. I hope Will and Hilary have a go at the next level, the associate. Here, they would write a statement of intent and begin to create their own artist’s identity which whilst building on the licentiate criteria would add the criteria of taking, editing and showing a set of images, and writing a statement of intent that have potential to lead to the assessors knowing what the applicant was setting out to achieve. I wish them all the best and thank them for putting forward their panels. It was a privilege to have been involved in assessing them, and in a small way being part of their journey in photography.

Stewart’s engagement with photography began in 1975. A professional photographer since before leaving school in 1978, he worked initially as a press photographer before adding commercial, sports and social photography. He has BA (Hons), Masters and PGCE degrees in photography, and will shortly be starting his PhD. He began volunteering for the RPS some years ago and as well as being an assessor is part of the distinctions committee which plans the direction of the distinctions. He is also a regional organiser.

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