We held our judged by the members panels evening again this year. We don't get a judge in, everyone present is given a peice of paper and required to score each panel as it is shown.
Putting a panel together isn't about picking your three best images and presenting them all at once, it is about finding three images which work well together. That might mean similar shapes or colours or some other unifying theme.
Having to judge also teaches our membership how hard it is to put a mark to a picture, thus taking the edge off their wrath when a visiting judge doesn't deliver the marks they expect for their work.
We had plenty of entrants, which was very encouraging. I didn't think that some of them made great panels though. However, the collective judgment of the members was that mine deserved third place, Clive Trusler second and Derek Grieve first place.
My set was three photos taken on an afternoon walk on a sunny day in the lake district. I chose them because they had a common colour pallette and location.
Clive presented us with three pictures of the Namib desert. They made a great panel as they were quality pictures with a unifyiny theme.
Derek took first place with an excellent selection of three pictures taken on a visit to Venice.
The winners and a few others were dragged kicking and screaming to the front (except Clive who is always willing to talk) to explain their panel. It has to be said that the winners weren't necessarily the most entertaining, Robert Mitchell took that prize away with his account of a weekend in London with his dearly beloved. Enough said.