Our first competition of the season took place on 6th October 2022. We were pleased to welcome Doug Berdt of Edinburgh Photographic Society, who had agreed to judge our Digital Projected Images competition. Doug remembered his last visit to Musselburgh Camera Club to judge our Black and White Print Competition in December 2020. You can see a galleries of Doug’s work at the following link:

https://edinburghdoug.com/

There were 54 images altogether, entered by 17 members, with the usual mixture of landscapes, portraits, wildlife shots, sport shots and some interesting abstract compositions. Doug remarked that some of the images were of poor quality and contained halos, noise and JPEG compression artefacts. He wondered if those images had been taken on a mobile phone camera and advised members to save images in RAW format wherever possible. Some images also had unnatural fuzzy areas in their background, which could have been caused by poor cloning. Doug enjoyed the creativity and wide variety of subjects shown and gave us advice on how to create a better composition. A shot won’t work if there are too many competing elements (such as a shot of an entire garden centre display). He recommended isolating just a few elements (such as a small group of interesting plant pots). A composition also works best when there is photographer involvement, which helps the viewer connect with the subject. A picture of people doing something with their backs to the camera doesn’t work as well as people looking at the camera and showing you how to do it. There were some lovely portraits entered, which Doug suggested could be improved by toning down the highlights in the background. There were the usual comments about cropping in to remove distractions and concentrating on the main subject, although Doug felt a shot of a hare and a shot of a sunflower would have been better with a bit more space around them. The top scorers were (in reverse order):

• 5th place (48 points)
  • Stephen Williams
• 4th place (50 points)
  • Malcolm Roberts
  • Mike Clark
• 3rd place (51 points)
  • John West
• 2nd place (52 points)
  • Carol Edmund
• 1st place (54 points)
  • George Todd

The top images were:

• Eyes Focused on the Next Gate (George Todd) – 20 points
• Paddington Station (John West) – 19 points
• Far Away Look (Carol Edmund) – 19 points
• Kingfisher On The Rocks (Malcolm Roberts) – 18 points
• First To The Bend (George Todd) – 18 points
• White Tailed Sea Eagle (Mike Clark) – 18 points
• Forth Bridge (Gordon Davidson) – 18 points

Well done to George Todd, Carol Edmund and John West on your well-deserved medals. And thank you to Doug for judging the competition.

Next week we will go through the competition images a second time, with more opportunity for feedback and questions. Also, don’t forget to bring your 3 mounted prints for the Colour Print Competition.