STATE COMPETITION NEWS from our FPP Salon Chair, Al Audleman

Florida’s first-ever hybrid judging is over with entries up over the past years. We hung in there with rules “close” to PPA’s IPC judging, with a couple exceptions as usual for Florida! We had 96 cases with 516 entries, up slightly from last year. We had 227 prints (including 35 exhibit only) and 289 digital entries. Entries: Portraits-234; Illustrative-48; EI-33 Social event-21; Commercial-16; Albums-8 Always a lot of discussion as to how digital entries compare and fare with print submissions. It was incredibly even! Our merit percentage was 44%, with 46% of the prints meriting and 42% of the digital files. Often, the percentage of merits or the overall scores of digital entries is much lower than prints due to the fact that the more seasoned and serious competitors tend to stay with prints. But it was not the case so much in FPP, with a relatively equal split in merits and awards! Of course, for the most part, the big winners were the best photographers. When in final judging, it seemed to make no difference to our panel of very talented judges … giving equal weight to prints and digital files. We also added significant trophies for Photographer and Artist of the year plus a new “Album of the year” given in honor of Susan & Stewart Powers, both instrumental in the increase of entries and quality of albums over the past several years.

Congratulations to all the winners!