General Notes from the Chairman
It seems that we are seeing the start of a new group of people who are going to keep challenging for the accolades in the Projected Image class of our photographic work. David Burns has now achieved three 20’s out of four digital images presented for judging. Jane Cooper is close on his heels with one 20 and two 19’s. Both David and Jane are new members and the delightful thing is that they bring with them clearly an eye for photography and composition and to some of the purists, Black and White. Mike Davison and David now share the top slot with Jane coming in third. Other new people who are making an impression on the score sheet are John Gauvin, Tim Hulbert, Di Walker and Bob Charles all positioned nicely to push upwards. What will a “Touch of Red” bring I wonder?
In the print section the excellence of Ian MacWhirter and Peter Michell keeps bringing in the points with Martin chomping on their heels. Again the next competition may bring a change but when all is said and done the best composition and image usually gets the accolade so I can’t see either Ian, Peter or Martin falling too far behind. It will be interesting to see how the judge interprets “A touch of red”.
Clear leader in the enprints is Jane Cooper again with top marks of 6 points.
Well done to you all and the old timers had better watch out!
We have reached 40 members now which is superb not only because it means that we are now much more secure financially, but it also means we have new blood which brings with it new ideas and challenges. It does bring other things which we must remember. With that number of people the time needed to judge increases significantly which is why we reduced the number of images for competitions to two. This also means that we must start punctually, keep our coffee and tea break practical from a time point of view and get back to our seats promptly when the Chairman signals it. It would be a great help in the running of the club evening if you could bear these points in mind on our club evenings.
Peter Picthall
2007/08 Projected Image Competition No 2
The second of our Projected Image Competitions attracted an entry of 40 images, just 2 less than the first competition. Twenty members submitted images which compares with the regular number of 5 members who provided images to the Slide Competitions last year. As we now have 40 members it is quite likely that the PI Competition entry could grow even larger which would certainly present “The Management” with logistical problems.
The mini-fiasco of our first PI Competition was fortunately not repeated – if it had then heads would have had to roll. The procedure however was not perfect, a few rough edges still need to be smoothed. The FFP software used to run the show is relatively new and the developer listens to user complaints and suggestions and rapidly produces solutions – a refreshing change from the global software companies.
The Judge, Gavin Beesley, gave constructive criticism of our images laced with a lot of humorous remarks. He confessed at the start that he no longer did still photography but had taken up video work, with some success at national events. He made remarks on how each image might be improved, almost always by making some kind of crop. There is no reason of course, why members should not prepare their PIs in the same way as they manipulate images prior to making prints. It is not essential to use the whole image captured by the camera.
It is the custom in our club, at the end of a competition, to announce the names of authors of images scoring 18 points and above. In our first PI competition the judge gave this range of marks to 10 out of 42 images i.e. 24%. In this competition our judge gave the same range to 15 out of 40 images i.e. 38%. This might mean that Gavin was more generous to us or that the standard was higher this time, or a combination of the two. Seven images were awarded 18 marks and five got 19 marks – details can be found elsewhere in this Newsletter. At the top things became interesting; three images gained the maximum of 20 marks, 2 of which “Giggling Girls” & “Reflections” were by David Burns. The overall winner of the competition, also with 20 marks, was “Perched” by Jane Cooper. This fine monochrome image was a worthy winner and fortunately Jane did not reserve it for the set subject competition ‘shadows’ later in the season which it would have won easily, so we all still have a chance there! The splendid performance by David Burns means that he and Mike Davison are now joint leaders each with 75 marks followed by Jane Cooper (74), Jean MacWhirter (72) and Derek Grieve & Martin Tomes (71) and another 7 members all within 10 points of the two leaders – the race is on!
Ian MacWhirter
2007/08 Print Competition No 2
Another good evening with a lively judge Gavin Beesley ARPS gave us all a chuckle whilst giving some worthwhile comments and criticisms of our prints.
He started by saying that all our prints were worth 19 or 20 points but that he would have to ‘nit-pick’ to separate them for competition purposes.
He awarded four 20s, six 19s and four 18s which was a measure of his impression of our work.
The overall winner was Peter Michell with a lovely nude study called ‘Innocence lost’, which gave Gavin some ‘hot flushes’. Peter has a gift for photographing the ladies and this adds a new dimension to the club’s work, as nobody else has yet shown their hand in this area. Well done Peter, and more power to your camera!
Martin Tomes got the next 20 with his great landscape ‘Dawn on the Downs’. He also got a 19 with another called ‘Misty Arun Valley’. Very well done Martin - one of our old stars.
Ian MacWhirter got the next 20 with his ‘Gentoo diving from Ice flow’ and a 19 for his ‘Male Wood Ants preparing to fly’. Well done Ian, who can always be relied on to give us the very best Natural History pictures.
Finally, Daisy Kane got the last 20 with her ‘Scary Movie’ which was a delightful shot of a young boy clearly scared by what he was watching on the TV.
New member Jim Hutchings got the first 19 with his first entry in a club competition called ‘Autumn sunlight’ and a 17 for his other entry also called ‘Autumn sunlight’. A very good effort Jim. Well done.
I got the next 19 with a shot of the Utterly Butterly display team at the Shoreham Air show last year, called ‘Over we go’.
Next our Chairman Peter got 19 for his ‘Sea Balconies’ and also for his other entry ‘Earth Tones’. Very well done Peter.
Mike Davison got the final 19 for his ‘Bay in South Africa’. Well done Mike, who always produces the goods.
The 18s were achieved by Denis Mace, our elder statesman, with his ‘Water lily’; New member Roger Stevens (who I predict will always be getting higher marks) with his ‘Hut no 1448 and neighbours’ and also for his ‘Silver Birches’. It is great to see some Black and White pictures again.
Next up was chairman of vice Paul Hayward with his ‘Splendor in the grass’, Paul is always up near the top.
To end the print section, we had the en-print entries - eight in total. Your Committee has had to try and cut down the total overall number of entries in all three sections of our competition nights simply to enable them all to have a fair ‘airing’ in the limited time available.
Jane Cooper was the winner again with a shot of a couple of columns. Jane then went on to win the PI comp., so she is going to be a threat to all the ‘oldies’ in future!! Second was John Gauvin with a lovely landscape with his first competition entry, well done John. Third was Sue Jahan with a lovely berry picture.
As our Chairman said, the overall quality of our work is improving all the time and I think it is because we have some really top class photographers in our midst, without mentioning any names Ian.
Derek Grieve