Club News

Eight members of SCC (25% of our members) attended the Sussex Federation print competition at Burgess Hill on Saturday afternoon and I suspect that most of us expected that we would end up being placed 10th or 12th as usual. However, we were in for a great surprise, as my e-mail to Chairman Chris on Sunday morning explained:

Dear Chris

I am extremely proud to be able to report to you our outstanding performance at Burgess Hill yesterday afternoon when our club was placed 3rd overall.

Originally billed as a panel competition, this was changed to a stand alone PI competition due to a lack of interest in panels within the clubs members. Each person could enter 4 separate PIs for “Every Picture Tells a Story”, and the 3 year rule was waived, certainly allowing Ray to enter a 40 year old image.

When the idea of titles came up at committee level,

Having arrived from Mexico that morning I was more thanhappy that Janet was chairing this meeting as I dozed along coming to terms with a 6 hour time difference and a 28 degree (centigrade!) temperature difference between getting on and getting off the plane. Then at half time Derek took me to one side saying he was going home as he wasn’t feeling well and would I write up the report – more attention needed from then on! Derek has provided his first half report (thank you Derek) – I’ll use that as notes for those times when I was a bit adrift, mid Atlantic.

Keith Gibson, fromKingston near Lewes came to judge our final competition round. New to us, Keith has been involved in photography for 40 years, specialising in landscapes both monochrome and colour. A science teacher by trade, he has 20 years judging experience, and it certainly showed.

We were a bit thin on the ground for our third competition night. Several members were away, and several more had been struck down with various “lurgies”. Thus it was up to the stalwart few to try and make enough noise to welcome Glyn Edmunds back. It was certainly a more subdued occasion, but we did our best to lift the mood for Glyn.

We were pleased to welcome Ken Scott ARPS back to the club to give his new lecture “It’s All in the Mind”. Ken is a man of many parts. We know him through his photographic work which includes lecturing, judging Camera Club and County wide competitions and as the author of books on photography. He also organises the training of photography judges in our region and we all know how difficult their task is from our “I’ll be the Judge of That” evening. Outside of photography Ken is a keen mountaineer, a qualified cricket coach and by profession a psychologist.

David Eastley LRPS came to judge our round of the Southern Fed. Projected Image League competition tonight, which is an annual fixture.

There are 7 clubs in our league and each club enters 8 images. So 56 pictures to be judged.

Once again our Chairman has come up with something new which was thoroughly enjoyed by everyone present. Ever since he joined the Committee a few years ago, Chris has come up with new ideas which were new to our Camera club

The evening started with a few parish notices. Liz was thanked for managing and setting up the display in the Library and again this week for setting up a great display of our prints in the square at Storrington. We hope that all will have a look as it is a brilliant way of letting the people know what we get up to.

Sadly, the final meeting in 2015 was poorly attended, as we had a very nice evening.

I arrived to put out too many chairs, as it turned out, to find Daisy delivering bags full of goodies forus to eat and drink. Unfortunately she was feeling unwell (she was chauffeured by her Son who has just passed his test) and so she retired homeward. ( We have since learned that she is now feeling better.) So Anne then took charge of things and heated up the mulled wine and set out all the platters of fine grub.

LastThursday we welcomed Paul O'Toole for our second competition night. He described himself as one of Ken Scott's baby judges, and progressed into judging because he felt it was hard to be critical of judges if you weren't prepared to put yourself up there. I think this baby judge has grown up quite a lot, and can now at least call himself a junior judge! The evening was amusing, and gave a lot of food for thought photographically.