Texture

Hello you loverly folks.

It's a new day'

a new dawn

an I'm feeling good.

So, the new season has started and the first competition has happened.

This one was Texture.

This season I'm looking to have all the scores for all the competitions all rolled into one prize at the end.

Please beware that if you miss an event, you might face an uphill struggle to get back on terms.

When I say all competitions, I mean the Jan Reilly Trophy, Sam Tuck Trophy and Peter Turner's Print Trophy all lumped in with the PDIs and the print competitions. The only exemptions would be the Counties competition and the Radley & Read extravaganza next August.

Ok, back to this week.

We had a good turnout, 47 images put up for Roy Essery (Colchester Camera Club) to mull over. There would have been three more but they were stuck up in the ether, and I was nagging the author on a redundant email address.

It started with one of Val's Photos of a tree, that could have been a rock, thus reminding us how the title can help set up an image.

I like Roy, he tells it like it is. You can almost feel the kiss, slap, kiss coming.

But even the slap bit is acceptable, this is where we are supposed to learn ...

'It's a bit soft'

'that bright spot near the edge'

'maybe a crop down the left hand side'

all designed to get us to look past Auntie Mable on a tightrope, supping a Guinness

and not noticing the gorilla on the LHS giving us the bird.

I have an associate who always recommends you turn the photo upside down to spot the imperfections.

Roy kept a good pace and by tea break, had got through more than half of the images.

One weird thing about his style of marking this time, was nothing was held back. We had scores ranging from Six (definitely textured ... but the crop, focus and exposure all let it down) all the way up to tens (good title, maybe a tad bright ... a vignette might well have drawn the eyes in) This style of marking I have not come across before. Maybe it was just for us. It does add anticipation if you have one of the held backs, but did it make a difference ... Who knows?

So, at the end of the evening, he had awarded nine nines

congratulations to Steve and Colin (two images each hitting this high) and one each for Tony, big Kev, David, Cheryl and l'il old me.

Three nine ana halfs ... again Tony, big Kev an me

and three tens ... two for Tony and one for Maddy.

Pushed for a one two three Roy said

Tony's Rockface was third (as previously described above)

Maddy's Leaf Veins (Yeah, deffo texture, lit really well, great composition, out of focus background & has space around. Maybe clone out bottom LHS) grabbed second.

Finally Tony's Qinghai. (colours and depth are amazing. The formation, layers, the lie, clarity and sharpness. This has it all) A glorious landscape. I could get lost in this photograph for hours.

I'll put up the top three below, not in any particular order, but it shouldn't be to hard to guess.

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