Two of our members had individual success at Saturday’s County wide competition (18 clubs took part) and our team results were none too shabby either.
The competition was held in Burgess Hill and although only 5 of our members went along to see the judging that was a better turn out than many other clubs managed. The competition has 2 divisions – development and open. It seems there is no particularly clear division between the 2 except that anyone who holds an RPS distinction (or similar) must only take part in the open division. The judges said they could not distinguish much difference between the work in the divisions – I’ll leave you to draw your own conclusions.
The pictures are prejudged and marked in the morning session and then the judges work through each of the clubs showing the 8 pictures as a panel and then picking 2 or 3 pictures from each panel for comment. Technical problems made the panel display almost unviewable from the floor and I found it irritating that the judges commented on each panel as a whole as ther
e is no requirement to put forward a coherent panel of photographs in this competition.
Anyway we saw a very varied set of photographs and heard some differing comments from each of the 3 judges. Inevitably after 36 panels interest flags a bit but we did sit up and take notice when they started awarding the cups and the gongs.
Firstly Derek Grieve LRPS was awarded a medal in the open class for his photograph “The Blackbird and the Wasp” the judges commenting on the clarity of the reflection in the picture. I collected the medal on Derek’s behalf protesting (but not very loudly!) that I wasn’t Derek.
Then we heard that Jean MacWhirter LRPS had been awarded another of the 3 medals on offer in the Open Class for her picture “Little and Large” – a tiny bird and an enormous elephant seal in the Falkland Islands. Jean was congratulated on her eagle eye in spotting the subject and on how sharp the picture was as it must have been seen and taken in a split second. Nobody was convinced I was Jean when I collected her medal in her absence!
Teamwise we came third in the development section which was very good but only tenth in the open section – despite high marks for Derek’s and Jean’s pictures. Chichester won the development class, Seaford the open with Chichester winning overall.
So a good afternoon all round but particular congratulations for Derek and Jean.