I entered my Centaur image into this week’s Camera Club competition. It was awarded 17 out of 20 points. The scoring doesn’t bother me, but the reasons for the score bother me a lot.

An entire conversation took place about nipples. The ‘human’ half of the Centaur should have nipples. Should it? Who decided that?

Centaurs are mythical creatures which originated in Greek mythology. They have never existed and are fantasy not reality.

If we want to be more reality based, female horses don’t have nipples. They have 2 teats in their groin. The horse in this image is an actual female horse, but you can’t see her teats as they’re up under her hind legs. The creature has 4 legs, not two. If it had offspring, the offspring are more likely to feed like a horse standing on all 4 legs and as such would use the groin teats to feed – how on 4 legs would you feed from breast nipples on a human? Wouldn’t it be, like, a bit awkward?

Who says which part of a Centaur is human and which is horse? They will surely share DNA, a blood supply, nerve endings, a reproductive system. I mean, the whole thing gets ridiculous. We’re talking about fantasy. There are no rights or wrongs to imagination.

I appreciated the comments about the technical aspects of this photograph. The judge stated that they thought the face was a little too pale (I disagree) and the spear is too dark (I agree and will change this). No comments on the story or impact, which should make up 70% of the mark. She did say it was technically excellent. So what were the reasons for the score of 17?

We are killing creativity. We cannot judge fantasy pictures like they’re ‘real’. They’re not ‘real’. If I’d wanted to give this mythical creature wings it would have been justifiably within my creative remit. Maybe there would have been a debate, then, on whether Centaurs have wings like Swans or wings like Sparrows 🙄

I get really irritated with the way fantasy images are judged, as you can probably tell. They are creative photographs and should be judged as such.