This week club members visited North Berwick Photographic Society for the “Match an Image” competition. The competition took place at the St. Andrew Blackadder Church in North Berwick, where we were treated to tea and cakes.

The competition was judged by Gordon Rae. North Berwick began the competition with an image of a tap, and Musselburgh replied with Jim Innes’ image of a kite surfer. We were astonished that Gordon declared our image a match. This first round set the scene for the competition, where every single pair of images in the first half was declared a match! John West’s domed bowl of pears and light bulbs successfully matched North Berwick’s photo of the inside of a domed cathedral roof. We played John West’s image of a feeding hoverfly to discover that North Berwick had an image of a feeding giraffe weevil, which was declared the better image as it was a harder subject photographed in Madagascar. We tried to exhaust their images of insects by following up with Malcolm Robert’s beautiful blue dragonfly, only to find they matched it with a photograph of a crocodile with butterflies on its head, also photographed in Madagascar. At the tea break North Berwick were leading 20 points to Musselburgh’s 18 points.

In the second half it became harder to match the images; but we successfully matched their image of baobab trees in Madagascar with Steven Beard’s image of Butterdean Wood. Then they matched Jennifer Davidson’s Woodland Nymph portrait with a very different lady whose tattoos matched the nymph’s dress. The matches became more tenuous as the evening wore on. Karen Woodcock’s Winter Sky image and Joe Fowler’s Old Mill image both successfully matched North Berwick’s pictures from Arizona because all the images contained rocks and stones. But the matches became harder and harder, and Steve William’s interior of the Sagrada Familia couldn’t quite match their abstract image. Then we pulled off a lucky match late in the competition when North Berwick presented us with an image of an upturned boat on the beach at sunset and we replied with Mike Clark’s image of the X Craft submarine. The competition finished as a well-deserved draw, with Musselburgh and North Berwick both achieving a total of 36 points.

Thank you to everyone who travelled to North Berwick to support the club, and to everyone who submitted images. And thank you to Gordon Rae for judging the competition and putting up with the heckling. Next year the competition returns to Musselburgh.

Next week we are hosting the 4-way interclub competition at Musselburgh. Come and support your club as we host Stirling and District Camera Club, Edinburgh Photographic Society and Kirkcaldy Photographic Society. We will be meeting at Fisherrow in the larger room G6 (not our usual room) at 7pm on Thursday, 23rd November.