SCC do well at home!

Meeting Report

We hosted our first at home Southern Federation competition this evening with our friend Trevor Gellard returning for the second time this season to judge. We have been members of the Southern Fed for quite some time to enable us to get a good deal on the club's insurance, but as its member clubs are all so far away we have never taken part in anything with them. With the advent of the PI competitions of course we can now enter stuff by sending a CD, job done.

We all had a really relaxed and fun evening with some great banter between Trevor and the members present. This is not usually allowed in our own internal competitions but in this case most of the images were from other clubs unknown to us, and there were a few which really did provoke comment!!

Six clubs are in this competition and they have each entered eight images; so we saw 48 pictures. We know absolutely nothing about the other clubs, but imagine that clubs from Poole, Ringwood and the I.O.W. would have a muchl larger membership than us and a club called Spectrum did very well with FIVE 10s; but then Storrington had two 10s and three 9s, brilliant.

My 'Golden Eagle with Hare kill' came up the first of our images and got 9 after criticism of the lack of detail in the snow-not a bad start for us. We then had Chairman Di's 'Delicate Flower' which Trevor liked very much and gave it 8.5 (can't do eight and a half on a computer!). Our third and last image before tea was Charmain's 'Land Speed Record' which was again applauded and got another 9. After tea, Jane Cowards 'Hammer and Anvil' was held back as was her 'Red Arrows over Windermere'. Trevor said that he sees a lot of Red Arrow pictures but this one was easily the best. We then had Jean MacWhirter's 'Gentoo Penguin feeding Chick' which was also held back. Trevor had some difficulty to start with making out what the picture was showing exactly, not being a wildlife chap!The rules of the competition say that the title has to be read out AFTER the mark is given, which we all agreed was daft. Next up was Di's picture 'Biggles' which a lot of us love, but Trevor did not like the out of focus control tower in the backgroud which some of us think is integral to the picture. Anyway he only gave it 6.5.

Trevor finally went through the considerable number of held back images and gave 10 to both Jane's images, many congratulations to Jane, and 9.5 to Jean's Penguins.

I have to mention some of the best images from other clubs. There was a magnificent image called 'Misty sunrise Normandy' which showed a delightful rural cottage on the left of the picture with a spec of the bright early morning sun shining through a misty haze with the garden and a garden shed on the right. Absolutely fabulous. Then there was another hazy shot of some moored yachts with a swan in just the right place. There were some really good nature shots two of which were both of Marbled White butterflies from differtent authors. Also a picture which I have seen published of four Danselflies perched equi-distant up a long twig sticking out of very still water with a mirror refection. A real winner and something you might only see once in a lifetime, but which 99% of us would never see. Finally a picture of a Turtle swimming in blue sea which was so sharp and almost surreal.

Thank you Trevor for a very entertaining evening.

Submitted by Derek Grieve on