Match the Image
This was one of those occasions when I turned up at an event having no idea at all what to expect. “Fun” had definitely been stipulated, but this guarantee only made me more apprehensive about the content of the evening. Would there be forfeits? Might I be required to do “a turn”? Perhaps more importantly, was it going to have anything to do with photography at all?
I was running a little late so that by the time I arrived three tables were already set up in different parts of the room, and around each table were several chairs. In the centre of each table was a large mound of printed and mounted photographs. As it turned out, these were mainly previous club competition entries that had been retained so that they could go on to be entered in external competitions and exhibitions. They were therefore of high quality and showed much variety in both content and presentation.
So far so good. After the usual social catch-ups we all sat down and Susannah explained the plan.
The people around each table constituted a team who would play collaboratively to win as many points as possible. At the end of the evening the team with the most points would be declared the winners and could henceforth gloat as much as desired, whilst the losers would have the opportunity to sulk and declare the game “not fair”.
The first team would select any of the prints in front of them and it would be placed at the front of the room on a stand. This was the challenge photo. The other two teams would get two minutes to try to find the image most similar from their own stacks, and pass it also to the front. The closer the match, the more points were awarded.
Susannah was to be the sole judge and arbiter, and the success of each match attempt was assessed according to five criteria. I’m even now not completely sure what the criteria were as they seemed to mutate somewhat over the course of the evening, but in the main:
Genre - e.g. landscape, miniature, abstract
Colour - the predominant colour or monochrome
Subject - person, building, bird, etc.
Setting - city, woodland, room, theatre, etc.
Wildcard - some category that the team putting up the challenge photo would pick.
Each criterion matched yielded one point. As you might imagine, the teams answering the challenge photo made plenty of attempts to expand the criteria on an ad hoc basis in the hope that their offering might attract an additional point or two. Could a tiger match a zebra on the basis of both having stripes? Could a crocodile match an ice cube based on one having square scales and the other square sides?
Of course not! In spite of constant barrages of heckling, Susannah maintained her authority and the evening passed off with much laughter and virtually no violence.
For me, it was a good change to look at these prints really close up instead from several feet away as is usually the case on competition nights. I learned quite a bit about how they had been printed and mounted. I got some ideas about using colour and composition. And I even had some fun.