Category Archives: Competition Photos

If you want advice on a prospective upcoming competition entry then please upload your photos here and someone will offer you advice before you print and mount.

21 November 2024 (Match An Image Competition)

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This week we were delighted to invite North Berwick Photographic Society to Fisherrow for the “Match an Image” competition. The competition was judged by Simon Wootton of Midlothian Camera Club. Images were displayed in pairs, and Simon’s task was to judge whether the second image shown matched the first, and in the case of a match to judge which was the better of the two images.

North Berwick started the competition with a strange, distorted shape which turned out to be the reflected image of the bow of a ship. Musselburgh responded with an image of a laughing duck which, astonishingly, was declared a match because the duck’s beak and tongue had a similar shape! Musselburgh responded with the first of a series of John West paperclip creations: a grid of paperclips. North Berwick replied with their image of an array of prayer wheels, which contained the same number of rows and columns. Another match! The evening continued with North Berwick challenging us to match their variety of telephone images and Musselburgh challenging them to match our selection of indoor abstracts. We got lucky when North Berwick shows us a picture of the glowing balls at Newhailes House & Gardens which we matched with a picture of some light bulbs. North Berwick flummoxed us with their arctic scenes, as we had no snow scenes in our collection. The best we could do was try to match their polar bear with an otter (another animal on water, although not necessarily frozen). At the tea break North Berwick were just ahead by 16 points to 15.

In the second half we hit them with a series of flower pictures which gained us a few match points and bonus points. But they replied with a series of animal images that became harder to match as we ran out of examples. Then we exchanged some portraits. Carol Edmond’s portrait “Hi There” was matched but declared the best image. It became harder to match images in the second half, but Simon also wanted to reward the high quality images that were coming up, so the matches became more tenuous. Yes, we matched their silhouette of a soldier holding up a gun with two hands with our image of a kayaker battling the rapids and holding a paddle. But they matched our image of a man on a tricycle in an alley with a street image because the diagonals were the same. By the end Musselburgh clinched the competition by 33 points to North Berwick’s 29 points.

Thank you Simon for some entertaining judging. It was great fun. Thank you to everyone who submitted their images for this competition. You helped us win it! Next year we’ll be travelling back to North Berwick.

  • Unfortunately, the speaker we had booked for Thursday, 28th November can’t make it. So next week we’ll either have a Members Evening or something Derek can put together at the last minute.
  • Derek is arranging a photoshoot at the National Museum of Scotland this Saturday morning, 23th November, at 10:30am. If you’d like to come, please meet Derek in the foyer some time between 10am and 10:30am. Let’s hope the snow holds off.

16 November 2023 (Match An Image Competition)

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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.

Digital Images Competition and Aurora

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A reminder that this coming Thursday is the deadline for entering the Digital Projected Images competition. This is an open competition where you can enter colour images of any subject. To enter the competition please email your 3 JPEG images to our competition secretary, George Todd (georgetodd1957@me.com). If you can’t email your images you can give them to George this Thursday.

Images need to be sized to fit into a 1600×1200 pixel rectangle, as shown below. A 4:3 landscape image can be resized to 1600×1200, but a 4:3 portrait image needs to be resized to 900 x 1200.

If you are a beginner and don’t know how to resize your images, send them anyway. George is always happy to help beginners to resize their images. Best of luck. The competition will be judged by Eddie Telford on 12th October 2023.

And now the second part of the news. I am getting a red alert for an aurora this evening, and the sky is clear! If you have the time, and are able to find a place with a good view of the northern sky, you could get some great shots this evening.

https://aurorawatch.lancs.ac.uk/

See you this Thursday, when Neil Scott will give us his talk on “Minimalism My Way”.

12 January 2023 (Match An Image Competition)

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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.

Set Subject Competition: Castles

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A reminder that this coming Thursday, 8th December, is our last meeting at Fisherrow before the Christmas social evening. It is also the submission date for our first set subject competition of 2022/23. Please send your 3 JPEG images on the theme of “Castles” (sized to 1600×1200 pixels maximum) to George Todd this week. Submitting them now gives Joe a chance to judge the images over the Christmas break. The results will be announced when we return on 5th January.

Best of luck.

Black and White print submission deadline this Thursday

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A reminder that entries for the black and white print competition need to be handed in this coming Thursday, 3rd November. Please bring your 3 mounted prints to Fisherrow and email JPEG copies of your images to George.

See you Thursday for our colour print competition, judged by Neil Scott. Although we will be broadcasting the competition on Zoom, you will see the prints much more clearly if you come in person.

13 October 2022 (DPI competition review)

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This week we reviewed the feedback from last week’s Digital Projected Images competition and came up with the following hints and tips on how to improve the images and make the corrections suggested by Doug.

Quality Improvements: Some of the images contained noise, unnatural-looking halos and JPEG compression artefacts. Doug had speculated if these images had been taken on a mobile phone camera. Check the settings of your camera (looking for the gear wheel symbol on a mobile phone) and look for an “Image Quality” setting. If your camera has the option to save to RAW, switch this on. If the camera can only save to JPEG, change the quality setting to “High”, “Large” or “Fine”. If you see an “Image Compression” setting, change it to “off” or “minimum”. Also check the “Image Size” setting and make sure you are saving to the largest size possible. If you find a “Sharpening” setting, turn it off or reduce it to minimum, as the unnatural-looking halos can be caused by over-sharpening in the camera. Some mobile phone cameras have a “Pro” setting which allows you to change more settings when turned on. One of the poor quality images (a soft-focus view of the setting sun called “Pink Evening”) could be saved by reducing the clarity and blurring out the defects. That particular image worked because of the beautiful colours.

Cloning Improvements: Some images contained cloning artefacts, such as unnatural focus changes, duplicated objects or background areas laid on top of foreground objects.

  • Always apply cloning to your images at 100% magnification, so you can see the changes being made. If possible, clone your images in a duplicate layer, so you can erase mistakes.
  • If you are cloning around the edge of a foreground object, first make a selection around the edge of that object and then invert the selection. The selection will prevent your clone brush strokes accidentally replacing parts of the foreground object.
  • Look carefully when cloning and ensure you choose a clone source with the same level of focus as the area being replaced. Ensure there are no unnatural sharp-to-fuzzy boundaries.
  • Look carefully after cloning and look for duplicated objects. Clone these duplicated objects out a second time to remove the evidence of cloning.
  • Lastly, look for any mistakes you might have made during the cloning. Do the boundaries of all the objects still look normal? One of the competition images showing a cricket match looked odd because there was chunk missing from a wicket, showing where the photographer had used Photoshop to move one of the bales. Clone the wicket again to hide that mistake.

Better Composition: Some images were technically good but lost out because of poor composition. The best way to improve your composition is to view the works of other successful photographers, especially those entered for exhibitions and salons. For example, the Edinburgh International Exhibition of Photography 2022, the Dingwall National Exhibition, or the SPF Digital Championship. You can also “Google” for images of specific subjects you are interested in (e.g. “Images of wellington boot plant pots“) and see how some of the stock photos are composed. You will notice the most striking compositions tend to be the simplest, where the subject stands out from the background and isn’t competing with other distractions. Best of luck.

Tonal Corrections: The simplest way to make tonal corrections is to use the “Exposure”, “Contrast”, “Highlights”, Shadows”, “Whites”, “Blacks” and “Clarity” sliders in Adobe Camera Raw. If someone suggests toning down the highlights, try moving the “Highlights” slider to the left. To brighten the shadows, move the “Shadows” slider to the right. To make an image more punchy you can try moving the “Clarity” setting to the right. The “Blacks” and “Whites” sliders can also be adjusted so the image fills the whole histogram. However, when David Clapp spoke to us in March 2022 he told us that he makes his landscape photographs look more natural by lowering the contrast and not including the blackest black or whitest white in his images. So whether the brightness and contrast looks right can be a matter of individual taste.

You can make more specific tonal corrections by using the dodge and burn tools in Adobe Photoshop. Select one of these tools and use it like a brush. Change the “Range” setting to select where you would like most of the changes to be made (highlights, midtones or shadows) and reduce the “Exposure” setting to a small value (15% or less). Using a low “Exposure” setting helps you build up the effect gradually by brushing over the area that needs correcting. The “Burn” tool was used to darken the highlights in the background of one of the portraits without darkening the face.

  • The “Dodge” tool, which looks like a black wand, can be used to lighten areas. Try Range=Shadows or Midtones.
  • The “Burn” tool, which looks like a white hand, can be use to darken areas. Try Range=Highlights or Midtones.
  • The “Sponge” tool, which (funnily enough) looks like a sponge, can be used to change the colour saturation of an area. More about this later.

Lastly, if you have an image that needs a lot of dodging and burning (lots of areas that are too dark or too light) and would lose its punchiness if you just reduced the contrast of the whole image, there is a Photoshop shortcut you can use to save a lot of work:

  1. Open your image in Photoshop and duplicate the background layer by pressing Control+J.
  2. Select the background layer and desaturate it with Image/Adjustments/Desaturate, or by pressing Shift+Control+U.
  3. Now invert the background layer with Image/Adjustments/Invert or by pressing Control+I. You will see a black and white negative version of your original image.
  4. Now blur this black and white layer with Filter/Blur/Gaussian Blur or Filter/Noise/Median (the “Median” option is better if you want to preserve sharp edges). The amount of blurring determines the overall look of your final image. More blurring will give you a more natural look in the end.
  5. Now change the blend mode of this black and layer to “Overlay”. Voilà! You will see an automatically flattened version of your original image. The result might not always work. If you don’t like the look, try changing the blending mode to “Soft Light” or go back the step 4 and change the amount of blurring.
  6. Once the image has been adjusted in this way, you can now increase the contrast without losing the shadow and highlight areas.

Colour Corrections: An image showing a train emerging from under a bridge had a blue colour cast in the smoke. You can check for colour casts in your images by using the “Colour Sampler” tool in Photoshop. It’s the one that looks like an eye dropper next to a crosswire. Click the colour sampler on an area that is supposed to be white or grey and check that the R, G and B values are about the same. If the values are different it suggests a colour cast. (This works even in that frustrating situation when you are colour blind and a judge can see colour casts you missed.) The first thing to try is correcting the colour cast by adjusting the colour balance. You can use the “Temperature” slider in Camera Raw or the “Colour Balance” adjustment tool in Photoshop. Try selecting more than one area that is supposed to be white or grey. If you can correct them all by changing the colour balance then the job is done. But if you are happy with the overall colour and want to remove a cast from just one area (the smoke in this case) you can use the “Sponge” tool mentioned above. Change the “Mode” to “Desaturate” and use a fairly high “Flow” setting.

Sharpness and Focus: We reviewed some of the images which had poor focus or sharpness. It is worth trying the Photoshop “Filter/Sharpen/Smart Sharpen” tool to sharpen your images one last time after reducing them to 1600×1200 pixels for the DPI competition. Set the “Radius” to 0.5 and move the “Amount” slider to recover the fine detail that is sometimes lost when reducing the image size. I tend to use “Amount” in the range 20-80.

It can be really difficult to get the depth of field and sharpness right in a macro image. Poor light, combined with a moving subject, might force you to use a wide aperture or high ISO. Adding more light with the aid of a diffused flash is one way to improve hand-held macro images. There are apps you can use to calculate the depth of field in macro shots: for example PhotoPills. Some members have also successfully used the Topaz Sharpen AI tool to recover detail and correct motion blur (as long as you check carefully for artefacts before accepting the changes it makes).

Thank you everyone who entered the competition. I hope you all got some useful feedback from the experience.

Two different image submissions this week

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The next Musselburgh Camera Club meeting will be at 7:30 on Thursday, 13th January 2022. This meeting will be an informal “Christmas Members Evening”, where we will discuss our Christmas-themed images and vote on our favourites. George Todd will be presenting the evening, so please email George JPEGs of your 3 Christmas-themed images by this Thursday morning. (Note that images sent on Thursday afternoon might not make it before George travels to Fisherrow.)

We have two different image submissions this week. George is also collecting images for the second set subject competition on the theme of “Travel In Scotland”. Please also send George 3 JPEG copies of your “Travel In Scotland” images by this Thursday.