General Notes from the Secretary
Our last competition gave us the largest number of entries we have had for some years for our judge John Holmes to look at. To my surprise he managed to get through the judging with a margin of time to spare, gave some good technique pointers even though his comments on the winning images were a little sparse. The winning images did not need too much comment anyway as they all were of such high quality. Each competition we seem to have more and more excellent pictures. This does bring me to emphasise the comments from Paul Hayward our Vice Chairman. He mentioned various things which we must pay more attention to especially if we continue to have high numbers of entries. We must ensure that the images are correctly labelled with name, date of competition, workers number, title of the picture and judge’s name. They must be given to Derek on the appointed day as noted in the program and finally they must conform to the dimensions as set out in our rules. If anybody needs a set of rules then please contact me or any member of the committee and we will provide them for you.
Storrington Parish Council has informed me by letter that they hope that all the work to be done on the Leisure Centre will be completed at the latest by May, including the repair and resurfacing of the car park. During that time I have been assured that if there is any delay in the works then the contractors may be able to do something about the pot holes once they are on site. They may not want to risk any damage to their equipment and may fill in the pot holes temporarily anyway. Also we may be unable to use the Football Pavilion car park once work starts and have to use another entrance. We will be informed if this is necessary once work starts. So by the end of our year we should have a brand new car park and good access to the Pavilion for the start of our new year next September. Let’s hope so any way.
Finally the Regnum Crouch committee who run both the print and slide competitions that we enter have asked me to respond to the following question. “Should slides produced from digital images be admissible in the Crouch Slide Competition?” As you are probably aware it is possible to produce a very good slide from a digital image and we have had slide entries in our own competitions made by this method. The Regnum Crouch committee feels that slide pictures represent “the only remaining area of photography that fully tests the ability to get things right at the moment of taking. Print workers on the other hand have always manipulated their images from the earliest days of photography.” Please give this some thought and let me know what your feelings are on this fairly thorny question.
Peter Picthall
2006/07 Third Slide Competition
The previous competition achieved an all-time low of 12 entries but for this event it soared to 15! The large entry for both the prints and enprints (very encouraging) meant that the judge felt he had to deal with the slides in rather a rush. Some workers felt that more time should and could have been given to their entries. However, in general it was considered to be an enjoyable evening.
Derek Grieve was given a well deserved 20 for his very attractive landscape “Near Braithwaite” and Jean MacWhirter a similar score for her “Iceberg Reflection”. Diana Newnes got 19 for a simple but very effective cloudscape “Translucent Cumulus” and Jean MacWhirter an 18 for “Tornado Escort”.
The next competition – a set subject – ‘Abstract’ should be a real treat with a big entry and great variety and with a judge (Don Mitchell ARPS) who is usually most entertaining.
Ian MacWhirter
2006/07 Third Print Competition
John Holmes ARPS was our judge, who was one of the small band of people who kept Storrington CC going through the several years when it was difficult to get new members. He was programme secretary for ten years!
He had a mammoth task judging a total of 87 images. 54 prints was easily the biggest entry in my time in the club. This is absolutely terrific, but we may have to reconsider how we deal with such a large number of entries in the best way.
Anyway, John took a little too long talking about the first half of the prints with the result that he had to rush through the rest and really did not give enough time, in my view, talking about the better entries, when he had me and Paul charging about like headless chickens trying to keep up with the marking!
He said that our standards were high and his marks reflected his feelings. He awarded five 18s, to: Daisy Kane for ‘Agapanthus Blues’; Eric Keevy for ‘Arun View’; Peter Picthall for ‘Precious Bundle’; Mike Davison for ‘Door and Window Portugal’ and Mary Crabb for ‘Polished to Perfection’. Well done to all, but especially to Daisy and Mary two of our new members.
Then we had seven 19s: ‘Just the two of us’, ‘Garden Window’ and ‘About to Flower’ all by Martin Tomes; ‘Gumber Corner’ by James Heath; ‘Black tailed Godwit’ and ‘Juvenile Antartic Fur Seals play fighting’, both by Ian MacWhirter; and ‘Ice Scene’ by Peter Picthall. Very well done indeed James Heath with his first ever entries in one of our competitions, and of course well done to old hands Peter and Ian. Martin has been suffering badly with his printer not working properly since installing a continuous ink system. So he had to re-enter some old prints, which he was quite entitled to do, and by thus doing, gained three 19s proving that re-cycling really does pay!!!
Finally, we had four 20s. Ian MacWhirter’s ‘Stranded Iceburg, South Orkney Island’; and Eric Keevy’s ‘Alert’. Well done to the old experts. Then we had ‘Give me a Kew Bob’ from Robert Mitchell, an excellent result from a newcomer to this lark.
Top dog was Peter Michell’s very dramatic and good shot of a rescue helicopter, ‘To the Rescue’. All I can say is, watch out Ian and Eric!
Finally, John judged the en-prints and picked out the winner, a picture of some horses ploughing from Sue Worsfold, who also got third place. Jane Coward came second. My thanks to Peter for assisting with the competition as I lay panting in the corner. This means that Sue is almost unassailable having won all three competitions so far and being third once, giving her a running total of 10 points. Next is Jane Coward who has been second in all three comps giving her 6 points. The only other people with points are John Goodfellow and Audrey Gray both with one point each.
The only downside of having so many entries and high scorers, as far as I am concerned, is that I don’t always have the opportunity to spell out who the winning prints were done by and add my own comments. I think this competition was particularly fraught at the end and I will try to do better in future. [We all think you do very well already, Ed. ]
Derek Grieve
PC Security Part 2
Having set out some basic protection methods in part one, part two is an explanation of the threats we all need to protect against.
An anti-virus package is essential because the threat from computer viruses is huge. A virus is an unwelcome programme running on your computer which is up to no good. The best viruses hide themselves so you don’t know they are there and are very difficult to remove. Some viruses are there to do malicious damage to your computer, others are used by spammers to distribute e-mails. Spammers rely on this method of distribution because makes it very difficult to trace where the e-mail originated as it can only be traced back to the infected computer. There are several ways a virus can get into a Windows computer. The most common is via e-mail attachments, you receive an e-mail with an attachment and you open the innocent looking attachment which promptly installs a virus. The current favourite is a message purporting to contain an electronic postcard for you. An anti-virus package will protect at two levels, it will scan the e-mail as it arrives and remove the attachment or mark it as being bad, and if it fails to do that it will block the running of the attachment. Another way in is via web browser vulnerabilities. Internet Explorer (IE) is particularly bad in this respect. There have been many exploits where simply visiting a website can trigger IE to install a virus . The reason for this is that Microsoft added the ability for IE to run programs called ActiveX controls, and many of the ActiveX controls on Windows have security holes, the virus writers create a website which runs one of these controls in your web browser and exploits the faults in it in order to install a virus. Another trick is to add code which messes up your browser (like adding popups or redirecting you to sites you don’t wish to visit). This is possible because IE has Browser Helper Objects (BHOs) which viruses install in your browser without your permission. The best solution is to use Firefox because it doesn’t support ActiveX or BHOs at all, or if you really must use a Microsoft browser then visit Windows Update and install Internet Explorer 7 which reduces the number of available ActiveX controls thus reducing (but not eliminating) the risk.
Another route in for viruses is via network connections. This is what a firewall is there for – to put up a virtual wall between your computer and the Internet and control access to your machine. There are many services on Windows which are vulnerable to attack so a firewall is essential when connected to the Internet. This evening between 7pm and 8pm one of my computers was probed for weaknesses eight times, that is one attack every seven and a half minutes. If you are running Windows/XP with Service Pack 2 (right click on ‘My Computer’ and choose properties to find out) then you should be running the Microsoft firewall.
Phishing is a social engineering exercise (and a very successful one) where someone sends out e-mails purporting to be from a financial institution asking you to update your account. These e-mails contain links to bogus sites which are a replica of the real one, you are persuaded to click the link in the e-mail and fill in your account information on the bogus site and shortly afterwards the phishers empty your bank account. These attacks are becoming more and more sophisticated and the e-mails and bogus sites appear to be genuine. Both Firefox and IE 7 give some protection by accessing lists of known phishing sites. Firefox uses a list maintained by Google and is more effective than IE 7. As I wrote in part one, don’t follow links from e-mails to banks and never enter your entire banking password anywhere, your bank will only ever ask for a few letters from your password.
It is not hard to secure your PC so make sure you have an up to date anti virus program, an effective firewall, and be wise about phishing scams.
Martin Tomes
Full Enprint Results
First competition 5th October 2006
1 Sue Worsfold Bee on plant 3 2 Jane Coward Town Crier 2 3 John Goodfellow Rails and Clouds 1Second competition 16th November 2006
1 Sue Worsfold Horse and man 3 2 Jane Coward Grandpa & Granddaughter 2 3 Audrey Gray Man at work 1Third competition 4th January 2007
1 Sue Worsfold Horses ploughing 3 2 Jane Coward – 2 3 Sue Worsfold – 1