Scoring Methodology

Live judging: Most live judging is done in the context of LPS acting as judging host for PSA interclub competitions. Judging and scoring for those competitions will be based on the rules and guidelines of the specific competition. 

Online LPS competition judging: Each judge will give each photo a score between 5-9 on the three elements of Impact, Composition, and Technical Quality and add those three element scores to arrive at a total score between 15 and 27 for the image. The image scores of the judges will be averaged for a final competition score. Judges must score their own images as 0; the website will then average all the other judges’ scores and ignore the 0 score.

Some judges will obviously value some of these areas more than others.  As we are all different in our approach to photography, we are all different in what we value in a photograph. Following are guidelines for the meaning of each element score:

Impact
5—elicits very little emotional response

6—average, not a significant element

7—evokes above-average emotional response

8—evokes strong emotional response

9—evokes immediate exceptional response

Composition
5—displays little or no use of basic elements of composition

6—average, includes some effective use of compositional elements 

7—includes above-average use of compositional elements

8—compositional elements used in a highly effective way, with few drawbacks

9—exemplary choice of compositional elements to convey the intended message

Technical Quality

5—below average; issues with basic technical quality elements

6—average quality; some issues such as unintentional soft focus, poor   

      color or tonal range, distracting choices in post-processing  

7—above average technical attributes

8—strong technical attributes with few flaws

9—exemplary technical attributes