The night was wet and windy outside, but there was rejoicing inside!
A goodly band of eight SCC members came to the Steyning Centre for the Regnum Print competition. It is a great pity that more members do not attend County Competitions, because those of us who do attend see some really good pictures and this gives us new inspirations for our own work.
Steyning CC did a really good job of setting up and running the evening with display boards down all one side of the hall with room to move past! All the rounds were labelled and remained on show until just before kick-off and were retuned at the start of the tea break; and removed and replaced again for the second half. So there was plenty of opportunity to have a close look at all the prints.
My first reaction on seeing the quality of all the work was ‘OMG, we will be lucky to get anywhere'. However, off we went with round 1 and John Gauvin’s lovely ’Gladioli Stamens’ print got 20 points and our spirits rose. In the second round Janet Brown’s ‘Mum’, a picture of her Mum’s hands held together, was praised and got 17. Then off with round 3 and Anne Nagle’s ‘White-ruffed Lemur’ got another 20 and we found ourselves in Second Place at tea break. Great!
After tea and the raffle, in which none of us won as usually off with round 4 and Ian MacWhirter’s 'Arctic Kittywake in flight’ got 19 and we were still second. In Round 5, Jean MacWhirter’s ‘Polar Bear and Cub with seaweed’ got another17 and the same mark of 17 was given to John Gauvin’s ‘Impressionist Tulip”.
This put us finally THIRD Equal with Chichester and Horsham with 110 points What a brrrillliant result. Well done to all the entrants.
In First place was Bognor Regis CC with 117 points They got FOUR 20s! a 19 and an 18 what a result! Second was Worthing with 114 points with Three 20s a1 9 an 18 and a 17. Two of Bognor’s 20s was won by Roger Crocombe who was our last competition judge. Also for the record, our rivals Steyning CC came 7th, but one of their ladies, Maggie Tillerton,got best print of the evening, well done to her.
The Judge was Gerald Kittyakara LRPS who is a very experienced judge and who did a cracking job. He made constructive comments and suggested how he thought improvements could be made in his opinion and in a very sympathetic way. He awarded a lot of 20s (16) with eight 19s, but he really believed that the pictures deserved the high marks. (Jean said she remembered him awarding her good marks over 10 years ago when she and Ian were members of Worthing CC.)
Well done Storrington CC. We are a very small club compared with Chichester and Bognor having about a third of their numbers. We are also about half the size of Steyning. We have good skills in the club for Natural History, Macro and Landscapes, and as of this season, we now have BW workers doing well. Where we fall down is with what I call ‘Mucked about pictures’ (HDR) where you need a very artistic eye and good computer skills to get good results. Personally, I very often do not like the results, so it is not surprising that I am no good at it!
This was a very good evening all round, especially for SCC with our best result for some time.