General Notes from the Chairman
As I write only the best of year competitions remain to be decided. The annual competitions were hotly contested, as usual, with the exception of En-Prints. With the ease at which one can enter the projected image competitions it looks like En- Prints have had their day. It seems as a club we are a bit better at prints than we are at projected images – room for improvement then.
Overall I think the year has worked very well and congratulations to Tim on arranging the programme. Now we can look forward to social events and exhibitions to come in the summer – Martin’s idea of a photo walk ending at a house of refreshment seems like an interesting idea and I hope the date won’t clash with holidays for too many of us.
This year’s barbeque at Di’s will be very good if last year’s is anything to go by – even with the chairman cooking!!! (Unless someone else volunteers.)
Time to start thinking of and taking shots for next year – Tim is cooking up two set subjects and has threatened us with Sport for one of them. Watch for the announcement at or before the AGM.
Have a great Summer
Peter
The Sussex Fed Print Competition
Held at Hailsham on 15th March 2009, Judge Richard Walton ARPS
Seven club members attended this competition (whilst England destroyed the French at Twickenham) to cheer our club into 5th= place in this County competition with 20 clubs taking part, including some of the best.
The judge was Richard Walton ARPS who was very instructive on why he gave his marks. He said that the standard was very high which is why he awarded Thirteen 20s. His lowest mark was 11 (he gave three of them).
Our highest mark was Ian MacWhirter’s ‘Juvenile Fur Seal’ with 19. We got Three 17s_ Ian’s ‘Male Broad-bodied Chaser’; Daisy Kane’s ‘Brother and Sister’; and my ‘Head Ranger Innes MacNeil’. Finally John Gauvin’s ‘Rudbekia’ got 16.
This gave us 86 points against the winners Eastbourne with 94 so you can see that we did quite well. Our great rivals Steyning got 79 and were 13th and Chichester were 15th with 77!!
Our recent performances have been as follows:
- 2006 16th with 82 points (19 clubs)
- 2007 17th with 86 points (24 clubs)
- 2008 3rd with 87 points (19 clubs)
- 2009 5th with 86 points (20 clubs)
Derek Grieve
The Regnum Crouch P I competition
Held at the Drill Hall Horsham on 16th March 2009, Judge Ann Smith ARPS
I do not own an HD TV but I understand that you can clearly see all the pimples on the actresses faces. Horsham own an HD projector which showed up all the imperfections on Storrington’s PI images!!
However there was one notable exception to this: Jean MacWhirter’s ‘Gentoo Penguin feeding Chicks’ not only got 20 marks but was highly commended. Very well done Jean.
The first of our images to fall foul of the projector was John Gauvin’s image of a sliced Orange which turned into a Grapefruit! and scored 14. Next up was Daisy Kane’s ‘Authentic Indian Cooking’ which got a good 18 which pleased Daisy; but it was mentioned for having a black object with a small white mark on it. My ‘Coupling Damsels’ had nasty white patches at the right hand edge and got 16 and some black marks in the blue sky on Ian Mac Whirter’s ‘Cinnabar Moth Caterpillar’ caused it to be awarded 16 as well. Jean’s 20 gave us a total of 84 points and 5th = place(out of 10 clubs) which was the same placing against 20 in the Sussex Fed the previous day.
I can assure members that the selection committee have people who are aware of white and black bits ; but we did not really detect them as a problem on our projector. With four more points we would have got up to 4th equal. Anne Smith only had 50 images to comment on ( as opposed to 100 at the Sussex Fed) so she ended up describing every picture to us, which sent at least one of our members to sleep!
Chichester won the competition with 94 points with some very good images indeed.
Derek Grieve
Print Competition No 4
19/3/2009 – Any Subject, Judge Don Mitchell ARPS.
We started the evening with the en-prints with a good evaluation of each entry. The winner was Paul Setford with a lovely Flower bloom picture. He has therefore run away with the trophy for this year. Very well done Paul. You deserve the cup with your entries this year. Second was Audrey Gray with a picture of a girl with a rake and Third was Jim Hutchings with a shot of an ancient monument.
Then on with the main competition. Don really spread the marks this time, unlike previous competitions this year. He awarded only Three 20s , four 19s and four 18s. He explained that his starter mark was 15, giving marks up from there to pictures he liked and 18 and above for the outstanding pictures. He marked down form 15 for pictures that had technical faults or which did not cut the mustard with him. He also pointed out that all of this was only his opinion on the night and as an example of this, he gave me 14 marks for a picture that recently won a photographic competition elsewhere! So nobody lose heart.
The Star of the evening was our absent Chairman Peter who got Two 20s and a19! However, John Gauvin had the winning picture of the night (and a 19). His picture was of a Snowdrop complete with bulb and roots on a white background and was so simple and absolutely stunning. Peter’s pictures featured naked ladies of course- one on a horse with the proper clothes on called ‘Dressage’; one with few clothes lying on the floor with a pair of bright red booties randomly placed nearby. It was a stunning picture. The third was of a lady totally naked so as not to disappoint us. John’s 19 was of a deserted beach with a clear blue sky and a solitary deckchair and a bright sunshade in the sky space, also very simple and very striking; this one was entitled ‘Gone swimming’.
The other two 19s came from Ian MacWhirter of course called ‘Gentoo Penguin with adolescent Chick’ and my ‘Golden Eagle with Kill’.
The 18s came from Ian again with ‘Albatross on Final’; Daisy Kane’s ‘Upper Cast Neighbourhood’; My ‘Gannet on the Wing’; and finally Di Walker’s picture of ‘An ageing Tulip’ which was full of shape and colour.
Don Mitchell thrives on audience participation and discussion and he picked on Audrey and our latest recruit Terence Bermingham to enter into discussions on his assessments of certain aspects of some of the entries. However this is very unusual during a competition and is not to be encouraged. You can imagine how long a competition evening would take if the judge was challenged on his marks and judgments on pictures. Judges usually upset one or two people with what they say about our pictures, but it is only their opinion on the night and that is why we have them.
I hope that you will agree that we had a very interesting, informative and humorous evening courtesy of Don Mitchell ARPS.
Derek Grieve
Projected Image Competition No 4
16/4/09 – Any Subject, Judge John Holmes ARPS
For those us expecting Ken Scott to judge our fourth projected image competition it must have come as quite a surprise on the night to find that John Holmes was to be our judge especially individuals who had submitted images tailored to Ken’s fondness for mountain landscape scenes. Ken had cried off earlier in the week, having had to cancel at short notice due to work commitments. Tim had a frantic time trying to find a replacement and finally managed to secure the services of John Holmes. John had judged our second projected image competition earlier in the season.
For the competition itself, we had 60 entries and it was particularly gratifying to see entries from our newest member, Terence Bermingham. Terence achieved a creditable 17 for 2 of his images, one of which was a sports action shot. As we now know, Sport is a set subject for next season so we can be sure of stiff competition from Terence next year. Peter Picthall entered the same three images that he had used for the previous print competition, modifying them slightly based on that competition judges’ comments. All three of his images achieved significant increases in marks. So there you have it judge’s comments can provide you with positive analysis on how an image can be improved.
Two images achieved a score of 18, Derek Grieve for his ‘Gliding Gannet’ and Diana Newnes for ‘Vortices in Water’. This was Diana’s first 18 of the season, well done Diana.
Peter Picthall scored two 19’s for his ‘tete-a-tete’ and ‘Tunisian side street’ again Peter’s highest score of the season in projected images, as was Audrey Gray for ‘Serious Business’. Congratulations to both of you. ‘Georgie’ by Peter Michel was the other image to score 19.
There was a plethora of images scoring 20 points. ‘Red Pepper’ by myself, ‘Pampas’ by Martin Tomes, ‘Bluebells’ and ‘Evening Light’ by Daisy Kane, ‘Among the Glacier’ by Roy Powell and ‘Misty Sunrise’ by Paul Hayward. This was Roy’s first 20 in any competition, well done Roy.
In true Ken Scott style, ‘Misty Sunrise’ was judged the best of the night. Nice one, Paul.
The culmination of the Projected Image competition this year has seen Ian MacWhirter take the title with a combined score of 212 points, closely followed by Paul Hayward and Daisy Kane on 210. Well done, Ian.
This year 26 members have entered the PI competition, supplying 248 images for scrutiny, from a combined membership of 35, whereas last year 23 member from 42 entered the PI competitions. May you all maintain the good work keeping me on my toes through entering just as many images next year and providing judges with the difficult task of appraising our images?
John Gauvin
Panels Competition
Members Evening – 2nd April 2009
Scores were as follows, as voted by the members
John Gauvin 443 1st Martin Tomes 441 2nd Derek Grieve 440 3rd Roger Stevens 437 Roy Powell 434 Daisy Kane 430 Tim Hulbert 426 Peter Picthall 414 Peter Michell 405 Jim Heath 394 Robert Mitchell 378 Diana Newnes 364 Jim Hutchings 363 Max Burns 359 Paul Setford 356Congratulations to John on a splendid and illuminating panel!
And thank you to Clive for a very successful and interesting Member’s
evening.
2008/09 BOY Print Competition
A great win by Peter Picthall for his “Tractor Mechanic” in a closely fought contest amongst those awarded 20 points. Roger, our judge had great difficulty separating the final four with high praise being given for the three runners up, Daisy Kane with her “Brother & Sister”, Peter Michell with “Joceline”, and Jane Coward with “Horsepower to the rescue”.
The scores this year were even higher than last with 50% of the 33 entries attaining 18 points and above, against 25% last year. The differential could have been greater had our Judge not stuttered over a few fine prints that had received higher scores in previous competitions. He did as ever state that his awards were made on the basis of his personal preferences.
An encouraging end to the club year for the “Printers”. The work starts now to maintain the standard for next year!
Clive Trusler
2008/09 BOY En-Print Competition
Disappointing number of entries for this year’s competition. Only two people entered with three prints between them. Paul Setford pipped Audrey Gray to the post with his delightful print “Spring Colours”.
Clive Trusler
2008/09 BOY Projected Image Competition
The Best of the Year projected image competition allows members to enter 2 project images that have previously been entered into this seasons projected image competitions.
A few members, who shall remain nameless, decided to try their luck with other images. Unfortunately for them, copies of all images are kept on the club’s laptop and it was just a matter of checking entered images against these for each previous competition. Others decided that 3 images could be entered. All of this meant even more work for the poor projected image competition secretary, contacting members to explain the rules or receive instructions as to which images to enter.
In the end a total of 38 images were submitted for scrutiny by, our judge for the evening, Roger Bathard. Roger, I believe, is a member of Littlehampton Camera Club and some of his images are available to view on their website.
Roger provided his comments on the images, immediately followed by the score; it appeared without any deliberation, completely catching the scorers unawares. Fortunately, for us, the software crashed after the 3rd image giving time to recover the competition and be ready for the judge’s style.
Eight images scored 18 points, “All of St. Andrews, Steyning” by Martin Tomes, “Gentoo Penguin feeding Chicks” by Jean MacWhirter, ”Misty Sunrise” by Paul Hayward, “Just Landed” by Anne Nagle, “Red Arrows over Windermere” and “Hammer and Anvil” by Jane Coward and “Southern Wood Ant with chrysalis prey” by Ian MacWhirter.
Four images scored 19 points, “Waiho River, South Island NZ” by Clive Trusler, “RAF Falcons Parachute display team” by Di Walker, “Kindergarten” by Tim Hulbert and “Six!” by Terence Bermingham. Well done Terence in your first season with only three images to choose from.
Four Images scored 20 points, two by Daisy Kane, one by Ian MacWhirter” and “Katie” by Peter Michell.
Congratulations must go to Daisy Kane, achieving 20 with both her images “Bluebells” and “Authentic Indian Cooking”, Ian MacWhirter for “Four-spotted Chaser Dragonfly” but the final accolade goes to Peter Michell who was judged Best Print of the Year for “Katie”. Well done, Peter.
John Gauvin