I always look forward to having these SCPF P.I. competition rounds held at our venue, because one can get nice and close to the images and hear exactly what the judge is saying, where as if similar comps are held in their usual necessary big halls you can miss quite a lot sometimes.
The Judge was Graham Smith ARPS who I thought was a breath of fresh air. He talked whilst analysing each image explaining what he felt was right or wrong as well as being humorous, which made the whole evening very entertaining. Not all of us agreed with everything he said of course, but that is exactly why we have judges, to give their opinion on the night. He liked natural history subjects, unlike our first two judges from Bognor CC, and this of course suited SCC where we have a number of very good nature photographers; one of whom, our Chairman Anne Nagle, got two top marks of 10, firstly for her 'Razorbill pair’ and secondly for her ‘Black eyed Susan’. Our good fortune did not end there as we also got 9 for John Gauvin’s ’Times up’ picture, and another 9 for Daisy Kane’s ‘Under the Bridge’ and yet another for Janet Brown’s ‘Walking along the Cob’! Chris West got an 8 for his ‘Pennine Landscape’ and 7 for his ‘Wave Energy’ and finally Alex Swyer’s ‘Waiting' got 6, because Graham saw two images in the one. This all gave us a very good total of 68 marks in third place behind Bognor in second place with 69 and the winning club South Reading with 70, only 2 ;points ahead of us!! There are seven clubs in our league and we all entered 8 images i.e., a total of 56 images and we saw 30 images before the break and 26 after.
Well done us. We need a bit of a shot in the arm as we have not been doing very well at all up to now in this competition.
There were some very good images indeed particularly two absolutely amazing natural history images. The first was by Bill Brooks from Bognor (making up for my earlier rant about the Bognor judges) of a 'Barn Owl ‘ eyeing up his prey with his head down just prior to diving to catch it. Bill also got a 9 for a picture of a Nightingale in full song, which they mainly do well hidden in foliage. The second was by Anne Cole from Ringwood CC of two Field Mice interacting on an ear of wheat entitled ‘Don’t do that’. Both of these pictures were as good as any wildlife shots I have ever seen, with faultless backgrounds - very important. There was also a very unusual shot of the Vulcan bomber showing just its underside. Graham said he normally struggled to like pictures of aeroplanes, however this one ticked his boxes.
In conclusion then, SCC had a very good night in the competition and the Judge ensured that we all enjoyed it thoroughly.