Some members may recall the 2018 black and white print competition, where Sue Hill CPAGB and Doug Hamilton CPAGB  of Edinburgh Photographic Society judged our prints and gave us good advice. We enjoyed their double act so much we invited them back this week to judge our colour print competition.

There were 57 prints altogether. Several were landscapes taken in places around the world. Lots of shots from Scotland, but also some from Ireland, Yorkshire, Venice and New Zealand. There were several wildlife shots and some interesting still life and abstract compositions. Sue and Doug carefully described each print, explaining what they liked and giving feedback on what could be improved. There was a very high standard overall, leading to a record number of high marks. For the prints that didn’t achieve the high marks, unwanted distractions were a common theme: bright areas which drew attention away from the main subject, or tiny details (such as a polythene bag or intruding camera lens) which clashed with the main subject. Some images could have been improved by better lighting or a better depth of field. The black mounts used for some prints didn’t help the subject and Sue and Doug would have preferred to see a lighter mount. But kudos to Elaine Gilroy, for the entertainment brought by a print entitled “Your Left Luggage Is Secure”, featuring an armoured vehicle driving past a secure building looking like Fort Knox with a “left luggage” sign on it! Carol Edmund’s print “Feather Pillows” also raised a chuckle, since the feathers in question were still attached to the birds.

The top scorers were (in reverse order):

• 5th place (50 points)
  • Malcolm Roberts
• 4th place (53 points)
  • Jennifer Davidson
  • Mike Clark
• 3rd place (56 points)
  • Joe Fowler
• 2nd place (57 points)
  • Jim Tod
• 1st place (59 points)
  • George Todd
  • Anne Yeomans

The top images were:

• Platinum Point (Joe Fowler) – 20 points
• Lesser Masked Weaver At Work (Jim Tod) – 20 points
• San Giorgio Maggiore (Jim Tod) – 20 points
• Lunar Landscape (George Todd) – 20 points
• Pelican Reflection (George Todd) – 20 points
• Magnificent Hummingbird (Anne Yeomans) – 20 points
• Iguana With Tracker (Anne Yeomans) – 20 points
• Cheetah Resting In The Shade (George Todd) – 19 points
• Laua Heron Fishing (Anne Yeomans) – 19 points
• Brown Hare At Sunset (Jennifer Davidson) – 18 points
• Jay In The Rain (Jennifer Davidson) – 18 points
• Bridge To Nowhere (Joe Fowler) – 18 points
• The Old Mill (Joe Fowler) – 18 points
• Loch Ard Jetty (Mike Clark) – 18 points

Well done everyone for achieving such a high standard of entries that we ended up with seven twenty point images! And a special congratulations to George Todd and newcomer Anne Yeomans for jointly winning the competition with an almost perfect 59 points.

A club night on the 31st October was the perfect opportunity to have a Halloween knockout competition. Members brought along images vaguely associated with the theme of Halloween. 31 images were entered altogether. The mages were paired up and members voted for their favourite in each pair. There were several portraits, including a green witch, a vampire, a skeleton, three variations of a girl in costume, and several groups in scary gothic make-up. There were some composition shots of a skull or a Frankenstein in front of a graveyard, shots of pumpkins and spiders, a crow. Members wondered if the shot of a swan staring at the camera was quite scary enough for Halloween, and a landscape shot showing a calm sunset had the audience baffled.

There were an off number of images in the second round, so the audience voted on which of the rejected images to bring back. An image of the grim reaper was a clear winner, and it joined the other 7 images to battle for a place in the final. In the end, 4 images remained, and members voted for their favourite. The final result was:

• In 4th place with 3 points, the grim reaper image which had won a place in the second round, by Joe Fowler.
• In 3rd place with 5 points, an image of a group of glowing skeletons crossing the road (looking very like a still from a Ray Harryhausen film), by Anne Yeomans.
• In 2nd place with 6 points, an image of a pumpkin carved into a skull in a window framed by 2 candles, by Steven Beard.
• In 1st place, with 10 points, an image of a scary tree (below), also by Steven Beard.

Scary Tree in Dalkeith Country Park

So in the end I won the box of chocolates I had brought in to present to the winner! There were some “trick or treat” chocolates for the runners up. Thank you to everyone who entered the competition. There were some good images on show and hope everyone enjoyed taking part. You might well see that box of chocolates again in the near future… The evening finished with a review of the “Match an Image” competition from the previous week.

On 17th October 2019 we reviewed the results of the Digital Projected Images competition, which had taken place 2 weeks earlier.

03 October 2019 (Digital Projected Images Competition)

The judge, Simon Wooton, had left us a very comprehensive set of feedback on the images. This gave us the opportunity to review the competition images and discuss how they might be improved next time. Most members noticed the judge had spotted distractions or faults in their images they hadn’t noticed. This is a common problem. Showing your images to someone else before submitting them can often help. Another technique is to prepare your images weeks in advance, set them aside and forget them, and then look at them again before the competition. Giving yourself more time helps you spot things you might not have noticed.

We discussed some of the common problems reported in the images, and methods of correcting the problems. I have compiled all the advice into a handy PDF document which you can obtain by clicking on the link below.

ImageImprovementTable

NOTE: On 31st October there will be a Halloween digital knockout competition. Please bring along 1, 2 or 3 JPEG images on the theme of Halloween/Gothic/Horror/Trick-or-Treat/Costumes/Ghosts/Graveyards… or anything else vaguely related to the Halloween season. The best image on the night wins a prize.

This week we kicked off our club competition season with the Digital Projected Images competition. The competition was judged by Simon Wooton of Midlothian Camera Club. Click on the link below to see Simon’s gallery of landscape, sport and wildlife images.

Simon Wooton’s image gallery.

Simon had 72 images to judge and had gone to the trouble of providing a whole page of feedback on each image. We will print out Simon’s document so members can read the comments on their own images.There were several images of flowers, landscape and seascape images (some from as far away as New Zealand) , architectural shots from Edinburgh, sport and street photographs. Distractions in the background or around the edges of images were common comments, and some images were a little too dark or too bright. There were some beautiful sky images which didn’t quite work on their own. Two images stood out as discussion points because of their humour: “Beemer” by Edward Robertson and “What Does She Want?” by Carol Edmund. Both shots were funny and timed beautifully but had too many distractions to be successful competition images. Even so, thank you for entering them and cheering us up.

A mix-up with the score sheets meant we could only give a preliminary result on the night, but we can now announce the final results. The top scorers were (in reverse order):

• 5th place (48 points)
  • Jennifer Davidson
  • Elaine Gilroy
  • John West
  • Howie Findlay
• 4th place (50 points)
  • Steven Beard
  • Mike Clark
  • Anne Yeomans
• 3rd place (52 points)
  • Joe Fowler
  • Malcolm Roberts
• 2nd place (55 points)
  • George Todd
• 1st place (57 points)
  • Jim Tod

The top images were:

• Tarasay (Jim Tod) – 20 points
• Growth Amongst Decay (Jim Tod) – 19 points
• Two Ducks At The Waterhole (George Todd) – 19 points
• Fabrication Welder (Joe Fowler) – 18 points
• Move Over (Joe Fowler) – 18 points
• Remarkable Rainbow (Malcolm Roberts) – 18 points
• Church Of The Santissimo Redentore (Jim Tod) – 18 points
• Circle Of Flowers (Steven Beard) – 18 points
• Taking Jump Number Nine (George Todd) – 18 points
• Brown Bear Confrontation (George Todd) – 18 points
• Razorbill (Anne Yeomans) – 18 points

Well done to Jim Tod for winning the competition and achieving first and second place with two of his images.

Next week Christine Murdie will be giving us a fascinating-sounding presentation entitled “A Journey to 80 Degrees North: The Land of the Polar Bear”, and the week after that we will go through the competition images a second time, with more opportunity for feedback and questions.

This week was our last event at Fisherrow before the AGM on 25th April. It was an opportunity for members to bring in 1-3 prints each for an informal knock-out competition. It is an opportunity to bring along extra prints that were made earlier in the year but not used, or to try out some new images as prints. There were a wide variety of subjects: photographs of butterflies, flowers, landscapes, architecture, some beautiful portraits and some abstract images. Charlie Briggs raised a laugh with his image of a boy and a T-rex entitled, “We Should Have Bought Him A Dog”.

Prints were pitted against one-another in 3 knockout stages, in which the chairman (aided and abetted by Mike Clark) showed a remarkable inability to divide a number by 2! There was some resurrection rounds where the best images that had been eliminated could be restored and voted on again, and an image of Cove Harbour ended up ping-ponging between the two piles. At the end of the voting, members’ favourite images were as follows:

• Equal 4th place
  • Glass winged butterfly (Robert Wilson)
  • Abstract (Kevin Johnson)
• 3rd place
  • A misty sunrise landscape (Robert Wilson)
• 2nd place
  • A group of harebells (Robert Wilson)
• 1st place
  • An image of a farrier at work (Joe Fowler)

Well done to Robert Wilson for getting all three of his images into the top 5, and for securing 2nd and 3rd places! Also well done to Joe for winning the competition and taking home the box of chocolates.

Many more prints were submitted this evening than were brought to the Photo Advice Night earlier in the year, so I hope members also got some useful feedback and advice during the discussion over tea.