Club News

The last competition of the year is always the ‘best of the year’ when everyone submits what they consider their best entries from the season’s competitions for the judge to give his or her opinion of the ‘best of the best’.

Our judge for the competition was Caroline Preece; her second visit to the club this year. Consistent with the talk she gave earlier in the year “Tools not Rules” Caroline always encourages alternative approaches and explained that she hoped everyone would take something useful from her comments.

This year’s AGM was affected by a significant number of apologies for absence but about half of club members were present. The presentation of trophies included one to Kathy Drance as the most improved photographer and another to Norman Kirby for outstanding service to the club. All other winners had been announced previously.

A former President of the RPS, Rosemary Wilman HonFRPS ABPE AFIAP APAGB gave us an insight into her experience of taking photos "As she sees it". Prints on a variety of papers, a photobook and a concertina album accompanied her projected images. She has travelled widely and showed images from the Lake District, Wisley, Yellowstone, Norway, India, Santorini, Yorkshire and Iceland. The photos were mainly landscapes but she captured interesting people, as so many do, in India at the Golden Temple in Amritsar and on a tea plantation in Kerala.

The fifth competition of the year is always for set subjects; this year the topics being ‘Low Key’ for prints and ‘High Key’ for PDIs.  It took place on 18 April 2024 and was judged by Bob Webzell. A larger-than-life character, Bob is not only a very experienced photographer but also a past president of Brighton & Hove Camera Club, an A-list photographic judge and, surprisingly, an Honorary Maasai Elder, which he describes as the greatest honour of his life.

We came third in this competition, one point behind the leaders, who both had the same score and were separated using countback leaving Southwick as the winning club.

See the result summary

David Seddon's "About to Kick Off" scored our highest mark of 19 points.

Marcus Scott Taggart was an excellent judge, if a little picky at times. He did like an image to be plausible, so one or two images which were composite or heavily modified fell down on that test.

Here's how our images fared.

Disappointed by the lack of emotional connection to a series of photographs Huw Alban, a Dorset "artist using photography", developed his purpose in pursuing photography. He investigated what it was that made him stop after viewing an image to identify what encouraged him to look harder at it. If he could hear the sounds of the image or could see the quality of the image that made him look that little bit harder he could understand the message that the photographer was attempting to transmit.

The annual competition from which the Southern Counties Photographic Federation chooses its representatives in the PAGB inter-club competition was held in Bognor and hosted by Bognor Regis Camera Club. Participating clubs enter 15 prints and/or 15 PDIs to be judged by three eminent judges from outside the southern counties. The scoring method is different to that familiar in club competitions, i.e., out of 10 or 20, but is widely used in PAGB competitions, salons and international competitions and awards. It is a scale from 2 to 5 delivered via an electronic keypad.

Our fourth competition of the 2023-24 season was on ‘any subject’ and took place on 7 March 2024. It was judged by Lawrence Homewood, an experienced photographer, judge and speaker, from East Grinstead Camera Club. Lawrence was careful to remind us that the scores he would give were just his opinion; other judges may score the images differently. Throughout the evening, he gave helpful suggestions for improvement, where appropriate, and kept us all amused will his keen sense of humour. 

Members; evenings are an opportunity for us to see the wider range of photographic activities that our members engage in. On this occasion a quarter of members produced a very interesting and well appreciated group of projects.

Photographers in club competitions are familiar with judges criticising their images on the basis that they do not follow the rules. Caroline argues that there needs to be a reason behind a rule and set out to demonstrate that there are no rules just a series of tools than can be used in different ways to enhance the message that the photographer is intending to convey by applying some science to the decision making.