Hi,
This is one of those trophy competitions in honour of one of our members, sadly lost to us now, but we celebrate his time at the club by holding a contest with his particular penchant as the theme.
For this trophy, the brief is Black & White prints with an open subject matter.
Our Judge for this evening was David Portwain. David has been a judge here so often that we're thinking of asking him membership fees!
David is a genuinely funny guy who mixes humour with techniques, composition tips with wittisisms, processing hints with anecdotes. Sometimes he will laud your effort and hand out a seven, or just as easily challenge everything about the shot, then hold it back.
What he wants you to do is, not just take umbrage at his comments about your photo, but to listen to all his thoughts on everyone's images and try to take some of them on board. Best time to take the shot, getting higher or lower, how to spot when to lighten or darken a photo (dodging and burning) using contrast and texture. Silly things like opening a gate to allow the viewer into the picture, stretching the histogram to get a full range of shades. His biggest gripe of the evening was getting detail into those skies. Only one mention of the rule of thirds and then he contradicted that with who cares as long as it looks good.
From the club point of view, it was good to see so many entries, ten members supplying thirty seven prints between them for David to cast his beady eyes over. Fifteen of those he held back. Quite something to see eight members having their efforts held back. I was talking to the judges better half after everything and even she said that she was entertained by the diversity and quality of our efforts. So peeps, take a pat on the back, looks like we are moving in the right direction.
Of course, there had to be a winner and all the usual suspects were there (Katherine had all her efforts held back) and after a bit of deliberation, David gave three shots maximum marks.
Yours truly grabbed third place for "Sunrise, St. Peter's"
Katherine snagged second with the splendid "Buttermere"
And Dave picked up a first with his exquisite "Crocus on Glass"
I will try to get copies of these for the website but in the meantime
Here is two Davids fighting over the trophy

Comentarios