I was delighted this week to welcome North Berwick Photographic Society back to Musselburgh for the long-missed “Match an Image” competition. This competition format is almost impossible to host by Zoom and couldn’t take place during the pandemic. Our last match was back in October 2019, when the competition was hosted by North Berwick. This time it was our turn to host the competition, and Jennifer, Liz and George Smith welcomed our guests with some delicious tea and cakes.

The competition was judged by Gordon Scott and followed the same rules as before. Each club in turn displays an image and the other club attempts to match it in some way. Points are awarded to the first image if it cannot be matched, or to the second image if the challenged club matches it. A bonus point is awarded to the club which has the better of the two images when they match.

Musselburgh began the competition with John West’s iconic “For Khandles” image. North Berwick were amused by the title but couldn’t match the image. A good start. However, they replied with a fantasy swirl image which we attempted to match with a close-up of some flamingo feathers and failed. We replied with the first of our many motorbike images. North Berwick managed to match it but we got the bonus point by having the better image. Then North Berwick took the lead when we attempted to flummox them with Joe Fowler’s “Scotland The Brave”: an image of a queue next to a row of portable toilets. They managed to match it with a picture of some colourful beach huts and get the bonus point! By the time we reached the interval, North Berwick were leading by 14 points to 13.

During the second half we discovered that North Berwick couldn’t match our motorbike, horse and wildlife images and we couldn’t match their fantasy abstract and night photography images. When they posted an image of a shark we thought we could match it with one of Mike Clark’s underwater images but, alas, the lack of a shark in Mike’s image meant there wasn’t a match. We also attempted to match one of their night scenes with an image of a little girl who happened to be in the same pose as the figure in their image, but it was judged not to be close enough. But then North Berwick lead with an image of a bird and we pounced on it with Malcolm Roberts’ “Kingfisher on the Rocks” image. The image was judged to be a match and the better of the two, which nudged us ahead. There were no more matches, and at the end of the competition Musselburgh won by 25 points to 24. A very close call.

Thank you to everyone whose images were included, and to North Berwick for coming along. It was a particularly fun evening, especially as it was an interclub competition where participants are allowed to heckle. It must be a difficult to judge all those matches in front of a critical audience, and I thank Gordon Scott for putting up with us. I look forward to a rematch at North Berwick next year.

Next week our next speaker, John Glynn, will show us how to think creatively. John says he will be bringing along a lot of interesting objects and prints to show us, so it sounds like this talk will be another occasion where you’ll get a lot more out of it by attending in person.