Assessment Day

Today I headed down to Bath to attend an assessment day at the Royal Photographic Society. A while back I decided to try and go for the Licentiateship of The Royal Photographic Society and had an advisory at the Photography Show back in March. Since then I have finalised my images, printed them out and had them mounted, and today was the day.


I went in to the RPS very relaxed, and happy with what I had put together. Whilst waiting for the assessments to start I chatted with a few other assesses. Some nervous, some not so.


Once in the lecture theatre, and the lights went down, with just the presentation wall lit, it all started to get serious. The first panel of 10 images was put up. A good strong selection of pictures, which was passed. The next panel failed, then the next, and the next. In fact the next 5 panels all failed the level the 5 judges expected. By then I was getting concerned. Many of those panels were very good images, and well put together collections of images that worked well together, and they were being picked up on single images or small details.


As the order of the panels is not known, until the first image is put up on the wall you don't know if it is yours or someone else's, so those first moments of 'is it mine' is quite tense.


Finally, the 12th panel of the day was mine, and caught me off guard that it was going up. As with all the others they spent a few moments looking at them all from a distance, then the 5 judges went up close and were picking them up and looking at the pictures very closely. Before I knew it the head of the judging panel was asking if Matthew from Ardley was present, and this meant that they liked my panel and would be recommending it for approval to the committee in the next couple of weeks. Wow. What a relief that was when they said, and then spent a few moments explaining what they liked. I passed!


After the assessment I headed into Bath to get some lunch, and have a brief look around. The Royal Crescent was very nice, and would have been much nicer if it wasn't covered in scaffolding and scaffolders in reasonable chunks. So here is a picture from the down town shopping area


If you would like to see the panel, here is a link to the final panel, and how they were displayed on the wall.


I would like to say thanks to Chris Andrews (of AnnieAndChris fame) for helping me narrow my images down, and also to the guys at Imagex in Bicester for doing the printing and being so patient while I asked for images to be reprinted because they were not quite what I wanted. Also thank you to friends and especially family who have been very supportive of me going through this process.