The Regnum Crouch P.I. competition was held at the Steyning Centre and was hosted by Littlehampton CC. The Judge was Chris Palmer ARPS AFIAP DPAGP APAGB who has more decorations than WWII General Montgomery. He gave very few high marks, three 20s, one 19 and two 18s. He did not like SCC's offerings and our highest scorer was Charmaine with her portrait of her Son, 'Out of the Darkness' which he awarded 16 points. All our other entries got 14 or 15, and we ended up joint 8th out of eleven clubs with 88 points.
Steyning won with 101 points which delighted them and Chichester were 5th with 94. I came away really quite depressed as I either would never have even considered taking, or could not have ever done as well taking 90% of the images. Perhaps Chris also felt that he did not like a lot of the pictures, hence the low marks. He was one of those judges who having praised an image, then gave it 14. However I am not going to say too much as judging is a difficult job that not many people want to do.
Chris certainly gave very precise details of why he did not think a picture was not as good as it could be; for instance he said that Jane should have waited longer before pressing the shutter so the Red Arrow planes were bigger in the frame, and gave it 14 points (this same shot got 20 last Thursday).
Rosie Armes (one of Chichester CC's stars) got a very well deserved 20 for an amazing picture of a herd of Camargue Horses galloping towards the camera with spray and the lead horse with the most light on it, a truely memorable image.
I came away quite depressed and am thinking of taking up Ice Hockey instead of photography.
P.S. We did well in the raffle getting two prizes!