On Tuesday, 27th January we visited Haddington Camera Club for the “Match an Image” competition, which took place at the Poldrate Granary in Haddington. The competition was judged by landscape photographer Stephen Ball, who gave us a talk last year on “Scotland Behind the Lens”. You can see more of Stephen Ball’s work on his web site:

Scotland Captured – Photographer Stephen Ball

Musselburgh began the competition with Jennifer’s image of the googly-eyed elephant, which Haddington attempted to match with a picture of a tree, but there was no match because Haddington’s image did not have any google eyes. Haddington began with an image of some street signs, and the closest thing in our collection was Melanie’s close up of railings; again no match. Then we played the “unmatchable” abstract kaleidoscope image that Steven had made in the Royal Botanical Gardens. Haddington replied with an abstract spiral swirl. Stephen declared a match and also declared that Haddington had the better image, which gave 2 points to Haddington! Things got worse when Haddington played an image of a man sitting down with one of his boots poking through a metal stand. We thought we had nailed a match by replying with Derek’s image of a ballerina wearing boots with one of her boots poking through the side of a chair. But there was no match because the ballerina was standing up. Stephen commented that he thought ours was the better image, but you don’t win the points unless you match. We noticed that Haddington appeared to be short of animal images, so we tried Derek’s image of a green frog sitting on a red flower. Haddington replied with an abstract image of some green leaves, which was declared a match and also declared the better image. Another 2 points to Haddington. Haddington then posted an image of some skeletons sitting around a dinner table. We raised a laugh when we attempted to match it with an image of some teddy bears sitting on a tree stump. No match. We had a lot of good sport images this year, so next we lead with George’s cracking shot of a canoeist negotiating the rapids at Grantully. Haddington matched it and beat it with a picture of a breaking wave. “The canoeist has drowned!”, we all exclaimed. Another 2 points to Haddington. By the end of the first half we were trailing by 11 points to 17.

Haddington helped us drown our sorrows during the interval by providing a delicious spread of home made sandwiches, cakes, scones and biscuits. With half our images gone, could we catch up during the second half? Our luck changed in the second half. We successfully matched Haddington’s image of a man surrounded by smoke with Derek’s image of a man swirling fire sticks above his head, and ours was declared the better image! We managed to match Haddington’s astrophotography image of the bubble nebula with Kevin’s water droplet abstract. We also successfully matched a long exposure street shot with tram tracks by playing a photo of a pair of vintage trams taken at Beamish museum. Matches became harder as the second half progressed and our image pool diminished. We gained points by playing our sport and animal images, but we also failed to match their images (although I think we came close when we attempted to match their image of some upturned wheel barrows with our image abandoned boats). “They are a similar shape and they both carry things”, we exclaimed, but Stephen was having none of it. We played our image of the inside of the National Museum too early; attempting to use it to match Haddington’s abstract image of some light domes. You could sense the air of disappointment when the next image they played was of the inside of a railway station, looking almost exactly like our image of the museum. The competition ended with Haddington placing their last image: a snowy landscape. Could we match it? No, our image image was a shot of a pair of fighter aircraft in flight. Stephen mentioned again that he thought ours was the better image, but again you don’t win the points unless you match. We caught up a little during the second half, but the final scores were still:

• Haddington – 28 points.
• Musselburgh – 24 points.

It was an enjoyable competition from start to finish. The heckling and commentary from the audience was entertaining. Although the final result is disappointing (and at times we felt some of the decisions needed to be verified by VAR) we gave Haddington a run for their money, and a lot of our images went down well with the judge and with the audience. Thank you to Haddington for hosting the competition and providing a sumptuous feast at the interval, thank you to all the Musselburgh members who provided images and came to Haddington to support their club, and thank you to Stephen Ball for judging and putting up with our heckles.

• This Thursday, 29th January, George Todd will be revealing the results of our first set subject competition, on the theme of “Weather”.