Master of Photography

Master of Photography

I’ve written more than once about Sky Arts’ painting competitions, and this week I made contact with a show that I’d heard of, but have never seen before. Tuesday evenings at 8 offer the photographic version. And I have to say that I like it less, for a couple of reasons. The good reason is that it’s working the opposite way round, like Strictly Come Dancing, with one photographer eliminated each week, so that there’s an element of the negative (perhaps appropriately…) about the competition.



Fewer people are involved in the competition, end to end – starting with eight, and whittling down. And the whole thing operates with (I suspect) a comparatively vast budget, both for prizes and running the show: the first episode I saw involved a two-day trip to Sicily. High stakes, and a big cash prize (and Leica cameras everywhere).

And here’s the less good reason: I can watch painters painting without making any direct comparisons with what I‘d do in those circumstances: but here, the pressure is really on. Could I do better, or even nearly as well? If I applied, would I even make it to the first round? And the judges are doing precisely what I do as a member of the Critique Team here. Doubly scary!



As far as I can gather from the Sky website, the programme I’ve seen is the first from the second (of four) series. Sky subscribers can, I think, see all the programmes any time: the rest of us need to watch or record as they are shown. One of the judges, Caroline Hunter, is a picture editor at The Guardian – and criticised one picture for a lack of cropping options (or as we say in the Critique Gallery, for ‘precise cropping’! Other pictures lacked contrast, and there was some fairly random EXIF data, so we can all take heart.



The other judges, Darcy Padilla (an American photojournalist) and Olivero Toscani (Italian advertising photographer) were joined for the programme by David Alan Harvey, used to be a member of Magnum, and provided advice to the contestants. Maybe this is something for the ambitious to aim for if there is a further series – though it was notable that all of the entrants were quite young.

I shall be glued to future episodes – even though the programme makes me quite painfully aware of some of my own shortcomings. Time pressure is the least of the contestants’ worries, I’d say: and it is interesting to see the various approaches to a creative view of a challenging assignment.