Rónan Palliser, LIPF

Some of you who follow me on Twitter @ronanpalliser may have seen over the weekend that I was successful in applying for the first stage of distinctions granted by the Irish Photographic Federation (IPF) and I am now a licentiate of that federation, allowing me to use the letters LIPF after my name.  This is essentially a photographic qualification, awarded by a judging panel of some of the most experienced photographers in the IPF, and it was nice to be awarded it on my first attempt, and even nicer that the decision of the judging panel was unanimous.

You can view the successful panel, which includes the image above, and then return here to read a little more about the process.

I only decided to apply for my L, as it is known, just over two weeks ago.  I knew that it was judged twice a year and knew also what was required: in this case a panel of 10 images that show technical competence while sitting well as a coherent set of images.  Generally speaking it would be a better idea to prepare for the LIPF more than two weeks in advance, but I was hopeful, largely due to my blogging activities over the past 9 months, that I had a sufficient number of technically competent images from which to choose a panel.

Three of the senior members of Dublin Camera Club held a Distinctions Workshop in the club last Monday week – it was the final in a series of workshops leading up to this round of distinctions judging, and so I arrived in with about 25 images that I had mounted over the last 18 months for various competitions, and that, in general, had done reasonably well.  We spent an hour or so filtering out the unsuitable shots, and ended up with 12 shots – 6 monochrome and 6 colour – from which to attempt to construct a panel.

The aspect of the panel being a coherent set that sits well is very important, and a difficult one to get right without the guidance of people who have been through the process and seen many panels before – in this case my mentors were able to guide me on the layout, on which images to consider flipping horizontally, and on which made good center images.

One problem we hit was that three of the chosen 12 images were stronger visually than the others, and drew the viewer’s eye to them at the expense of the rest of the panel.  Not being happy with that, or the mix of colour and monochrome, an additional workshop was agreed for the following Saturday, and I agreed to bring in a wider selection of images.

The following Saturday morning I found myself printing close to 100 A5 images, chosen pretty much entirely from shots I’ve posted here, and arrived back in for my second workshop.  This proved to be a shorter process as we quickly ended up with about 20 colour images from which to build the panel.  This was narrowed down to the 10 landscape format colour shots which eventually made up my successful panel.

If you look at the panel you will hopefully see how they hang together – for instance the images at the left look right, and vice versa, encouraging the viewer’s eye across the panel rather than out of it.  The centre two images are central compositions, and visually strong images, and that is encouraged as it is the first place the viewer is naturally inclined to look.

All of the images have appeared on the blog in the past, but some in a slightly different way – the shot above of Floyd appeared previously with him running the other way in monochrome for instance, while Ciarán from Kilmainham Gaol was also looking the other direction, as were the couple on the steps in Rome.  These adjustments help to get the panel to sit well, and are possible on those particular images without the viewer not knowing the images have been flipped.

The judging process itself was very interesting to watch – some panels were unanimously unsuccessful, others had split decisions at which points the judges argued for and against awarding the distinction before re-voting, and mostly not changing their vote, and a few panels, like mine, were unanimously successful on the first vote.  There were some stunning photographs presented over what was a long day – I had to leave at 5.30pm, with the judging having been going non-stop since 11am, and it still wasn’t finished.  After the 66 LIPF panels that were judged there were about 15 AIPF (Associateship) panels which represent a considerable jump in standard – 15 images that need to have a consistent style and/or theme – and 7 FIPF (Fellowship) panels which are the top honour bestowed by the IPF and so hard-won – 20 images, all technically perfect, need to be submitted.

For me, I can now look forward to working towards my ‘A’, hopefully sooner rather than later, and it’s nice to be able to put a few new letters after my name and to know that I have taken at least 10 photographs that were worthy of a distinction.