Club News

One thing after another. First the visit to the British Wildlife centre, followed a week later by the Annual Exhibition, followed yet another week on by the Barbeque.

Fourteen members of the club (strictly 13 plus a wife) visited the British Wildlife Centre at Lingfield arriving at about 9.30am for a 'cuppa' before a briefing about what we could expect to see during our visit.

Eric Burchell joined us again to judge the final print competition of the season. Not as controversial as some of our judges this season, in fact he was very generous with his marking, 2x15s, 10x16s, 14x17s, 9x18s, 5x19s, 6x20s.

It would appear that birds of all varieties were his favourite subject of the night, but out of left field came Jane Coward with her Funnel Web Spider Boy who triumphed on the night. Eric commented that capturing the moment was all important and that to avoid “record” pictures for competition.

Judge Don Mitchell ARPS

Judge Graham Smith ARPS

What an improvement! Graham managed to achieve an incredible 50% increase in the percentage of images he marked in the 18-20 range. On his last visit he marked 36% of our images in his range, this time a whopping 53% achieved our top scores. An improvement on this scale will mean we all achieve those elusive big scores. More seriously, Graham is always generous in his marking and a look back at the previous competitions he has judged will bear testimony to this.

Just as judging is a personal view, so is report writing, and the authors assessment of the competition. In my humble opinion Don Mitchell was in top form judging our prints and projected images, with concise critiques of each picture focussing on technical detail and composition rather than the common trait we have experienced from some judges of lengthy descriptions of the content of the picture.

The Crouch Shield for Digital Projected Images was held on 12 March 2010 and hosted by Henfield Camera Club. The judge for the evening, Bob Webzell is a past president of Brighton Hove Camera Club and lectures and judges throughout the south of England.

In the first round, Paul Hayward scored 17 points for his image entitled 'Hard Times'. This put us in 6th place at the end of Round One. Could it get better?

We had a really interesting evening with Roy Hales and his wife Angela who gave us a presentation about the wildlife in Borneo.

Their particular hobby is the study of spiders and the rainforest in Borneo has a lot of different varieties including some brand new ones not before seen or therefore named.

They keep a huge collection in pots in a room in their house with dozens of specimens and look after and study them. They also run the British Tarantula Spider Society.

A great time was had by all, the one opportunity in the year that we can all become judges.

I was personally shocked by some of the comments made, lampooning some of the Judges we have had this year, showing a total lack of respect. Hopefully next season we can raise the standard of judging and have some more insightful comments to help us improve our pictures.