General Notes from the Chairman
Once again a judge has chosen our B.O.Y. prints, PI’s and en-prints which indicates that we are nearly at the end of our Club year. But what a way to end! As I said at the meeting last night Walter Benzie has to be one of the best judges, if not the best judge we have had at our meetings this year. He gave what many of you have expressed a need for which was an in-depth assessment of all the images, which areas he thought were good and what he felt were areas for improvement. He amazingly did it within the time allotted for him, but didn’t seem hurried or phased by the pressure and I believe he gave each image its fair share of time. Speaking for my own work, in some cases it had previously had a slightly higher mark, and he marked it down for various things which had not been pointed out by previous judges. So, I personally learned a lot from him last night, and not just from my own images. What is more, the spread of marks I felt were indicative of a man who knows photography, its tricks, its pitfalls, its glorious means of preserving a scene in all its beauty. I’m beginning to wax lyrical but I really enjoyed last night and for me it was the best one of the year. I really hope you all feel the same too. The winning images deserved their first places. Ian MacWhirter’s “Seals on the Ice Flow”, Mike Davison’s “Love in Venice” and Sue Worsfold’s “Landscape” were well chosen by the judge. Well done and my congratulation to you all. Mike Davison, much to our loss will not be rejoining us next year. He finished second in the prints and sixth in the PI comps. so his images were consistently good. He feels that he cannot do justice to working in two Camera clubs and so has decided to maintain his membership of Chichester. He will be a welcome visitor any time he feels like keeping tabs on what we are up to in Storrington and we will miss him and his contributions to our club.
Our next meeting will be the last one of the year apart from the “mix and match” at Steyning but more of that hopefully at our AGM. Please try to come as the AGM normally doesn’t take too long, and this is your chance to vote on any changes we may propose which we have gleaned from the survey, and vote in your new Chairman and Committee. For the newcomers the auction which follows is fun and you can pick up some real bargains. Anything is welcome from plants to wine, items of luggage and so on, even photographic equipment!!!! It is also the time when we will be presenting the individual trophies and I want to have a photograph of the winners and the members present for insertion into the local county press. We deserve the publicity as we have done so well this year.
This is probably the last “chairman’s notes” of my tenure as your Chairman. It has been a most enjoyable time in my life and I wish to thank all of you for making this so. Your friendliness, enthusiasm, and willingness to change some of your photographic mores such as the Projected Image competition have made running the club so much easier. I would also like to thank my committee, Paul Hayward V. Chairman, Mike Davison our Program Secretary, Derek Grieve for the prints, Ian MacWhirter for PI’s, Jane Coward for the finances, Martin Tomes for invaluable technical help and website management. Without these core people I could not have done the Chairman’s job. Behind the scenes they have worked hard all year to arrange our program, organise our competitions, keep our finances healthy, and generally step in when something special needed doing such as the library and Old School exhibitions and Storrington field day. Some of them learned how to operated new software and hardware and to their credit the new PI processes worked without a hitch. I would also like to thank some of our newer members John Gauvin and David Burns for recently stepping in to help manage in the ever increasing number of prints and PI’s we have to handle, and Di Walker for helping me with the secretarial tasks of the year and Daisy Kane for taking on the Newsletter production. Finally without John Goodfellow we wouldn’t have “vitals” for the break and I am very grateful to Jean MacWhirter for taking on the organisation of the Tea Rota and the membership attendance book. Without all these activities the club would not function like it has done. Thank you to all of you and well done. I know that with your new Committee the club will continue to run smoothly and will allow all its members to enjoy “clicking the shutter”.
Peter Picthall
2007/08 Print of the Year
So, the last competition of the season. ‘The Print of the year’ was judged this year by Walter Benzie who was paying us a very welcome return visit. He was in cracking form, being humorous, but at the same time giving very constructive comments on every print and pointing out what might have worked better. He is without a doubt one of the best judges we have ever had.
He held back 8 prints, finally awarding three 20s and five 19s. He said that he had the greatest difficulty in picking the winner from the three best prints, but finally selected Ian MacWhirter’s ‘Crabeater seals on Antartic iceflow’ as our ‘Print of the year’. He also heaped praise on Mike Davison’s seashore landscape pictures ‘Bay in South Africa’ and ‘The beach to ourselves’. Very well done Ian and Mike.
The five 19s were awarded to Ian’s ‘Gentoo penguin coming ashore’; Jim Hutchings’ ‘Red-eyed Shelduck_Slimbridge’; Paul Hayward’s ‘Trading at sunrise’; Roger Stevens’ ‘Two horse power’; and Peter Michell’s ‘Eve and the apple’. Congratulations to all of them. There was just one 18 – Martin Tomes’ ‘Frosty morning’.
There were ten 17s, which I always regard as being a very respectable mark as well, so well done all of those people too.
There were only four entries to the en-print competition. The En-print of the year was awarded to Sue Worsfold for her very good landscape and she also got second spot with a Badger picture. Well done Sue. Hopefully she will have finished her degree work by next season and we will see some prints in the main print competition from her. Third was a picture of a Swan form my new assistant John Gauvin.
So that’s it till September.
Derek Grieve
2007/08 Projected Image of the Year
This Competition differs from the earlier ones this season in that the primary objective is to choose the best image of the year. However it also gives an opportunity for members to have an expert reappraisal of two images seen in competitions this season. The judge, Walter Benzie, provided us with not only well-paced constructive criticism and advice but also a fair sprinkling of humour. Members seemed to find the evening one of the best of the season.
The results are given in detail elsewhere so I would just mention that there was a reasonably wide range of marks awarded from 13 to 20. Four images got 20 marks, John Gauvin’s ‘Chrysanthemum’, Paul Hayward’s ‘Our Breakfast’, Di Walker’s ‘Hellibore Bells’ and Mike Davison’s ‘Love in Venice’. After a short period anguishing over these images the judge declared ‘Love in Venice’ the overall winner & the “Best Projected Image of the Year” Well done Mike.
On a dismal note, of the 34 images entered for this competition 50% needed amendment to meet the simple club criteria for PIs. This on the face of it is an improvement on the 70% of the last competition but when one considers that all that had to be done was to copy two corrected images from a previous competition to the Pen Drive, it is truly appalling. We have had six competitions now in which to learn what is required and it is not difficult. We clearly have a major communication problem which will have to be vigorously attacked at the beginning of next season.
Ian MacWhirter