General Notes from the Chairman
What a start to our competition year! Winner of our new Projected Image competition was David Burns, a new member with a delightful image of his Daughter watching television, and other newish member figuring up there with the best, Audrey Grey, Jane Cooper, Roger Stevens (new member this year) scattered amongst the experienced shooters such as Mike Davison with a magnificent 2×20, Jean MacWhirter, Derek G, Peter Michel, and Martin T. The print section was as usual owned by our top echelon photographers with Ian MacWhirter scoring another 2×20. Daisy Kane and Margaret Gregory also showed well with their prints and show potential competition for our top flight people. En prints are the way forward for new members and Tim Hulbert showed that he has some competitive ideas which he can go to go forward with. Keep putting those super shots in for our judges to ponder over. The standard overall was excellent.
Our membership looks like it is increasing rapidly as judged by the number of attendees we had at the opening, and the second and third meetings. Please keep talking about our club to any interested people, we will be much healthier with a good membership number, and a good bank balance as we go forward into 2008.
| hope you all enjoyed seeing the results of our new equipment, the new screen, projector, laptop, and software. The small teething problems we had on the the competition evening were superbly handled by Ian MacWhirter with the able assistance of Martin Tomes. My congratulations to them both in making such a success of our first Projected Images evening.
It is great news that our past chairman Diana Newnes is at home again after what can only be described as a “period horribilis” if that is the correct way to say Latin. I am so glad that she has come through from a nearly fatal set of circumstances and is looking forward to coming to our meetings in the near future. Well done Diana.
Finally I look forward to the remainder of our competitive and meeting year and wish you all much success in the coming events.
Peter Picthall
2007/08 First Projected Image Competition
This was a unique occasion in more ways than one! Not only was it the first competition of the new season but also the first time the new projection equipment had been used in a competition, the first time the new competition software had been tried and the first time the projectionist had used the equipment under battle conditions. However, more importantly, it was the first of our new Projected Image Competitions where digital image files replace slides. Considering all these novelties it was not surprising that technical hitches occurred-and they did in spades! As the projectionist I offer my apologies for my part in the little fiasco. A decade ago a political party adopted the slogan “things can only get better”, I can only hope that this will turn out to be truer with us than it was with the politicians.
The new style competition attracted an entry 3 times larger than the average slide competition and a little larger even than the Print Competition. This probably has not happened before and indicates that digitally Projected Images are likely to be a major activity of the Club in the future.
The judge, Ken Scott, gave his usual balanced and considered opinion of the images and often gave helpful advice on how the pictures might be improved. The detailed scores are given elsewhere but I would like to mention a few of the leading ones. 18 marks were given to new member Roger Stevens for his vivid ‘Chilean Bromeliad’ and Peter Michel for his striking ‘Emma the Goth’. 19 marks were awarded to images by Audrey Gray, Jean MacWhirter, Derek Grieve, Peter Picthall and Jane Cooper. Three images were given the top score of 20 points and 2 of those (‘Love in Venice’ & ‘Beach Stroll’) were the work of Mike Davison – a great achievement. However, in my view, this was eclipsed by an image, ‘Little Lois’, a superb monochrome portrait by new member David Burns. This was declared the overall winner of the competition. Not only is this the first Camera Club that David has joined but it is also the first competition he has ever entered. Congratulations David.
The scores show Mike Davison in the lead at this early stage with 40 points, followed by Derek Grieve and Jean MacWhirter, both with 36 and in turn followed by 5 members with 35 points. There is a long way to go to the last competition and the ‘Set Subject’ events often put a cat amongst the pigeons. All good entertainment!
Ian MacWhirter
2007/08 First Print Competition
The club’s great friend Ken Scott ARPS judged our first competition of the season with his usual skill. An outstanding judge like Ken finds positive comments to make about every picture that he looks at, but then goes on with very helpful comments on how the image could be improved and this not only helps the author, but also gets everyone in the audience thinking.
As he left, and again at the rugger club on Saturday, (watching England beat the Aussies–best result ever!), he told me that he had been very impressed with the standard of our images and that he was very pleased at the great progress that we have made as a club in the last couple of years.
Ken awarded 20 points to four pictures: ‘Relaxing in the sun’ by Mike Davison (who had a very good evening all round); ‘Gentoo penguin coming ashore’ by Ian MacWhirter; ‘Sam’ by Peter Michell (last year’s print competition winner); and ‘Crabeater seals on an Atlantic Iceflow’ by Ian MacWhirter (our International Natural History photographer winner). This last picture was judged as the overall winner of the evening. Very well done Ian and also to Mike and Peter.
Two 19s were awarded to ‘Gower coastline’ by Martin Tomes; and to ‘Hibiscus profile’ by Daisy Kane. Well done to two more of our top people.
Finally 18s were awarded to ‘Pretty boy’ by Paul Hayward; ‘Inch Beach’ by myself; ‘Wood ‘n bricks’ by Peter Picthall; ‘Spanish courtyard’ by James Heath; and finally, ‘Revolving tapestry’ by Margaret Gregory. Well done to them too.
The en-prints were all commented on by Ken with Jane Coopers picture of a pair of her favorite motor cars pictured with complimentary flowers. Second was Tim Hulbert’s untitled picture and Third was Audrey Gray’s picture of an interesting Street lamp.
Even with only two entries from each entrant in the main print competition, we still had nearly 40 pictures to be assessed, and with the large number of Digital images, Ken had a lot of work to do.
Derek Grieve