Second Print Competition
President Roger Dye welcomed David Platt of St Helens Camera Club as our judge for this competition. Roger commented on the room full of people saying “we must have over 40 people here tonight”. Jonathan Bawden was quick to tell him that he thought everyone was over 40!! This set the tone for the evening. Roger welcomed the judge as a newcomer to NCPS but David insisted he had been here before.
The Judge had 70+ prints to consider. They were all of high standard and he felt sorry that, in order to differentiate, some images were going to get lower marks than, in other competitions, they deserved. He would go down to 12 marks and also use half marks in this attempt. Judging was a personal thing in that inevitably the judge has certain preferences and certain dislikes. In attempting to be objective the judge commented on what attracted him to a picture, and what distracted him. In general, white objects drew the eye away from darker objects – Was this the author’s intention? Or was it bad composition. Some prints seemed to have a colour cast, usually Magenta. He assumed this was unintentional. A young bird occupied about 20% of an image. If the bird was the main object, was this sufficient? Could we be including too much background in attempting to illustrate its environment? As a judge he wasn’t sure he could face six backsides at once, even if they were all highly decorated.
Still, images needed impact, and he thought some excellent flower compositions lacked this impact. The three conker close-ups were well composed, but, he felt, the whole lot should have been in focus. In still life pictures he felt he could expect all of the image to be in sharp focus. In some cases a gloss paper would have brought out the colours better. He liked steam trains and required to see all the details in those presented.
In one landscape scene he detected three separate images; in another he thought the pale uniform sky let the image down, though in another landscape he complimented the author on how, at every level as one moved up (=back) through the landscape interest was retained. Inevitably Nicola 1 was in competition with Nicola 2, Nicola 3, and Nicola 4.
David retained ten pictures for further consideration. We thought they would all be in the 17 to 20 bracket, but competing trams pushed one such aspirant down to only 13 marks. Finally a Red Sunset by Jackie Robinson emerged as the winner.
In his vote of thanks Geoff Robinson noted that dealing equitably with 70+ prints in an evening was no mean feat. David had made his observations equally on all of the prints, and we had had a good and thoughtful evening. The judge was applauded.
Barry continued to use his binoculars at the back of the hall. Is he setting a new trend?