We started the new year with a very good attendance for the Macro
Competition being judged by George Todd.

There were 42 entries from 14 members for this competition. Most of the
subject matter included flora and fauna, but there were a couple of
unusual items from imaginative photographers.

George started out by talking about the various definitions for Macro
Photography, but settled on the subject being photographed at Life size
or greater magnification.

The scoring was close and the the top scores were acheived by…

1st place – Gordon Davidson with 54 points

2nd place – Jennifer Davidson with 53 points

3rd place – Malcolm Roberts with 52 points

and joint 4th place – Elaine Gilroy, Mike Clark and Derek Muller, each
with 51 points.

While George was going through the images he pointed out a couple of
recurring issues. The first was that removing distractions should
absolutely be done, but that it should be done carefully. There were a
couple of instances of less than perfect cloning that spoiled otherwise
strong images. Distractions around the edges should also be taken
removed. The other recurring comment was about cropping choices, where
the photographer had cropped ends of insect legs off, or otherwise
chopped bits of the subject and that can look awkward. On the other
extreme, there were a few images that had a subject that was quite a
small part of the whole image and these could perhaps have been cropped
harder. Artificial light sources are often used for Macro shots to
provide enough light, but that can give rise to other issues on wet or
very reflective surfaces – consider diffusing the light source or,
perhaps use a polarizing filter.

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Regards

Ed