Last night's judge, Jurgen Lobert, sent me a link to one of his online posts that I think you might be interested in. You can find it below.
Camera club competitions, judging, and scoring have been fraught with controversy since the very beginning of such clubs. Here at CCC, there is often grousing about the unfairness of a judge's scoring or his or her overall competence. And then there's the debate over whether it even makes sense to try to place a score on anything that aspires to be a form of art.
In light of this, I think you'll enjoy reading what Jurgen has to say. He eventually gets into statistics (he would, of course, as a scientist), so if that doesn't appeal to you, just read the other parts of the discussion. I think you'll have a better understanding of the inherent difficulties in making judging anywhere close to objective--and may thus be better able to learn from the process and not be so disappointed when you get a 2 or 3 on what you considered to be a world-class photo! :-)
Gerry
