State Fair Photo Contest Update

I know some of you were interested in the results of the photo contest, so here we go. Pardon my grouchiness, but I'm going to vent.

In previous years, the fair would mail me my scores about a week after the judging. A certain score was required to have photos exhibited, so it felt special to get to display a photo even if it didn't win any awards.

This year, I waited eagerly to get my scores, but day after day I would check my mail and find nothing from the fair. Finally, I emailed asking when I should expect to find out which photos would be exhibited. After a few days, I had not heard back. Then on Friday, the first day of the fair, I got a text from Hollie (pictured above in the middle) saying her friend just saw her in a photo at the fair! So I called the fair to get more information. They put me on hold, and I waited for several minutes before I gave up.

Shortly after the attempted call, I finally received an email response! But it had no information, it just said:

"Jessica,"

and that's it. Somehow they accidentally sent the response before telling me what I wanted to know. I replied almost immediately with, "Yes? :)" but they did not respond. Three days later (it was the weekend, to be fair--ha! get it? fair), I got another response to my email with an apology about the prematurely-sent response. Then I was told that the scores had been sent that day, and also that every photo entered was being displayed at the fair.

She said this cheerfully, like it was great news, but I was really annoyed. Every photo is displayed? Where's the accomplishment in that? In the past, only 30-40% scored high enough to be displayed. I'm often competitive, and I want to feel like I qualified for something by doing more than just mailing photos out. It was disappointing to learn this, especially when I was already kind of annoyed at the entire process this year.

The next day I received my score in the mail. Yes, score, singular. Apparently they only send you the scores for photos receiving at least 10 points (out of 27 possible), and only one of mine did. That was the Hollie photo (center), which got a score of 11. My other two obviously received less than 10.

It's fine if I didn't score very high. I realize there are lots of much more talented photographers contributing to the exhibit, and I am not mad or being a sore loser. That's just the way it goes! But the way the whole thing went down annoyed me, and then of course it didn't exactly feel good to learn my highest-scoring photo got a measly 10 out of 27 points (that's 37%, or like an H+ in grades).

Anyway, I think this is it for me and the Oregon State Fair photography contest. It was supposed to be fun, like it had been before, but it turned out to be frustrating instead.

Gosh, this is a chipper post! Happy Friday. :P I'll try to post something better soon.