Annual Competition

Oh to be a judge at the annual competition!  Just to add to the tension, there may have been electricity in the air, but not in our normal meeting room, so we were forced to relocate at short notice.

Many of the images in this competition had previously been lauded in monthly competitions, so there was already a sort of benchmark against which a judge could be judged, so to speak.  This guest judge, Marty McNaughton, was not to be phased however.

There is, of course, a subjective element to any judging.  However, certain elements - exposure, sharpness, colour, use of compositional elements and so on - can be given some objective analysis.  Marty confessed to a degree of “OCD” with regard to the elements around the edge of the images where they were neither in nor out of the frame.  Another thing for me to pay more attention to in future competitions.

We kicked off with the monochrome prints, of which there was quite a good selection.  Mike won that one with his memorable landscape of Glen Auch.

Then it was on to the open prints - essentially any subject for a printed and mounted photograph.  In the advanced section a win for Susannah with her striking image of a decaying, baroque interior where three green bottles had been left by itinerant drinkers.  In the intermediate section, a landscape of East Whitby beautifully realised by Ian, and in the beginners, a head-on photograph of a competitive cyclist in intense focus produced by Andrew.

After the break we moved on to the projected images, with Mike once again taking top spot with his Shades of Summer, of which Marty remarked that he felt like he could almost reach in and touch the main subject - a single red poppy.  The intermediate award went to me with Strolling, a depiction of a family crossing Scott Street in the Glasgow city centre.  The beginners section went to Jan MacNeil with her take on the Shipbuilders of Port Glasgow (or “Skelpies”) sculpture, entitled Crashing Down.

Marty was clear on his reasoning throughout and gave helpful feedback on all the images.  A good job, and well done.