Brian Lomas from Oldham PS was our judge for this competition. President Tony Redford, casually dressed in his old trousers and shirt, welcomed a smartly dressed Brian as an old friend of the club whose style we admired.

Brian commented that he was impressed with the standard of the prints before him, that inevitably he had to try and differentiate between them, and that this meant giving lower marks to prints that in other circumstances would score considerably higher. He was forced into giving half marks (say 17 ½) to this end. He spent considerable time on the beginners/intermediate section, which would leave him less time to address the advanced print. He reserved 16 prints for further consideration after the break. By removing the No. 5’s in his list Competition Secretary Barry Pearson had presented the judge with 8 Beginner prints, 69 Advanced section prints and 16 Slides.

In his Vote of Thanks Geoff Robinson remarked he had known Brian for very many years (from when they both had full crops of hair!). Brian had never been negative in his comments, offering only constructive criticism which had made the evening a most enjoyable one. One of Brian’s comments had related to a horizontal fence at the bottom of an image. Brian noted that the standard approach was to use the fence as a lead in to a picture rather than a barrier across an image. He hoped the author would not take a fence (offence– geddit?) at this remark. This had mightily amused the chairman of our selection committee, who recalled the remark at our committee meeting the next day!!!

The competition results.......