General Notes from the Secretary
Another eventful year culminating in an excellent end of year roll up with the “best print of the year”. Considering that we are a club with a small membership I think we have done extremely well and the quality of all our work is of the highest standard. Congratulations to Ian, Martin and Sue on their achievements in the final competition, and especially to Sue who has come from a raw “enprint” shooter a couple of years ago to now being a force to recon with. Watch out Ian, Martin and Derek!!
Your committee is changing as you will appreciate. This year Rolf resigned due to ill health after some sterling work made more difficult by his handicap. Thank you Rolf for all your efforts and I am sure that whoever takes up the baton as Chairman will have a hard act to follow. Alf our treasurer is standing down after many years of keeping us solvent. Again thank you Alf for all your work over the years and may you enjoy your “retirement”. Finally Barry Hammond our vice chairman is standing down as you will know by. Barry has also done a super job as our acting Chairman since Rolf resign. Always in the background doing something, and but for him I think our tea/coffee break would be a disaster. Thank you Barry for all your work.
With our AGM we enter the summer break with the following dates for your diaries.
June 17th an exhibition of our work at the Rotary/Round Table fete in Storrington at the leisure centre.
July 13th Throw away camera competition in Storrington.
July 22nd at Paul Hayward’s house, Cheese and Wine party and trophy presentation.
August 19th camera shoot in Arundel with your own equipment.
August 26/27 exhibition of our work at the Flower Festival at the Old School Storrington.
I hope that you can come along to some if not all of them and support the club. Are there any volunteers to help at the exhibitions????? And we would love to have some prints, enprints and whatever to show off at both venues.
I think that is all I have to say. Have a good summer, take some fantastic shots and show us all at our next session in 06/07
Peter Picthall
Slide Competition
Sixth Slide Competition “Best Slide of the Year”
Last year the rules allowed each person to enter 3 slides that had done well (scored 18 & above) in that season’s competitions plus one other slide, this resulted in an entry of some 30 slides for the judge to consider. The same rule applied to the Print competition which also attracted a large entry, making for a very long evening and an exhausted judge. This year competitors were allowed to enter three slides which had appeared in this season’s competitions regardless of the score attained. Most of the slides would be high scorers of course but it gave room for authors to have a reassessment of work which they considered to have been previously misjudged.
The entry for this competition consisted of only 15 slides. The judge, Philip Peddy, marked the images only as a means of arriving at the overall winner (the object of this competition) plus the immediate runners up. The judging was of a high standard with much constructive criticism and emphasis on the important features of the images. There were some really splendid slides, any of which on another day might have emerged the winner, but that is the exciting way with photographic competitions.
The results were: – Best Slide of the Year “Gentoo Penguin and chick” by Jean MacWhirter with runners up “A Field Poppy” by Diana Newnes and “Red Squirrel” by Derek Grieve. All three are to be congratulated on their superb images. The judge also gave three 19’s and three 18’s which shows the high quality of the entry. We clearly have considerable reserves on which to draw for next season’s inter club contests.
One aspect that gives cause for concern is the steady fall in the number slide workers entering club competitions. We started the season with 8 and in the last two competitions have been reduced to 5 entrants. This trend is nation wide and mainly reflects the inexorable drift to digital technology. It is possible to produce acceptable slides from quite small digital files but few have tried it. Viewing images by projection onto a screen has an impact and luminosity that prints just cannot come near to matching. I suspect many people would be saddened if ‘Slide shows’, either from slides or a digital projector were to cease. Serious thought will have to be given to this problem in the very near future.
I would like to thank all who have assisted in the slide activities of the club and wish all club members a productive summer’s image hunting.
Ian MacWhirter
Print Competition
Report on the Best print of the year competition 4th May 2006 Judged by Phillip Peddy ARPS
Phillip Peddy was by far the best judge we have had this season in my view. He was very constructive with his remarks which were interspersed with humour and I think everyone will have learnt quite a lot from what he said. He obviously liked our pictures as he awarded four 20s, five 19s and nine 18.
The Best Print of the year was Ian MacWhirter’s ‘King Penguin Inspection’, which I said when it appeared earlier, is a really excellent picture. Well done Ian. Second was ‘Utterly Butterly’ by Martin Tomes, and Third was Ian again with his ‘Artic Tern in Flight’_ both stunners. All these were awarded 20 points as was Sue Worsfold’s ‘Dragonfly on a Barbed Wire’ to give it its short title! Sorry that you had to be 4th Sue, but as our youngest keenest member, I know from your reaction when I told you, that you were quite rightly delighted with your result.
19s were awarded to Ian’s ‘Spider devouring Prey’; Mike Davison,s ‘City Scape’ and his ‘Rock and Tree’; Martin’s ‘About to Flower’ and my ‘Frosted Leaves and Web’. Congratulations to all of them.
18s were obtained by Martin’s ‘Spiral’, my ‘Juvenile Robin’ and ‘Ruddy Darter’; Paul Hayward’s ‘St Pauls at Night’ and his ‘Artist gone to Lunch’; Sue Jahan’s ‘Pigeon Hole’; Peter Picthall’s ‘Iguana’; Mike’s ‘Morning Light’; and finally Diana Newnes’ ‘Arun Valley Sunset’. Again, very well done to all of them.
I added up all the marks gained in this competition and the resulting order was very similar to the final order in the main competition. However Martin Tomes came second instead of fourth. Martin did not enter one set subject competition, being a busy working family man, and this most probably affected his final placing. This result showed him to be one of our star photographers, as if you needed to be told that!
After the break, Phillip spent a good deal of time and commented on all the En-prints. This is what we hope to get all our judges to do next season. To that end, we will be asking for en-prints two weeks before the competitions as we do with the main prints and slides.
Our Champion this year was Sue Worsfold with her splendid picture of one of the Blue Butterflies on an ear of wheat, which was awarded ’ Best En-print of the Year’. Very well done Sue. Second and Third places were gained by our main competition champion Paul Hayward. A really interesting picture of a sculpture and its shadow was second and his coiled ‘Adder ’ picture third. Well done Paul. Your committee has decided that the En-print competition should be for beginners only, so no more entries from ARPS and LRPS members and Paul is now also banned! Peter Picthall’s lovely ‘early morning misty landscape’ was also held back for special mention. He was our champion the year before last.
So the end of another season. For the first time in a long time we won a County competition being First equal with Chichester, a club with 100 members. So we can be really proud of ourselves.
Derek Grieve