Camera Club

 Tonight is camera club night this will be a open meeting reviewing last years events and making plans for the new year. There will also be a chance to find out what photography related presents people got for Christmas. I shall be showing off my iPad and my dslr memory stick from the kids.

How neat is that!!!

And the winner is.......

Me!!!!!!

At Camera Club tonight they held a knock out competition of summer prints you could enter up to 6 prints and each one went head to head with another photo then it was a show of hands as to which one you liked best. Well after much deliberation I entered the following prints.

I know there is 7 but I was still choosing my photos and Ken just grabbed the bundle and put them in.

There were lots of different themes, quite a few Italian lakes and many of the Sydney Opera House.

Some of mine got knocked out in the first round but several went through to the following rounds.

Then it was down to the final 2 my raindrops photo and a wonderful moody misty tree silhouette.

It was nail biting as there had to be a recount but I won by one hand. The upside was that  I won a copy of Collins need to know Digital Photography and a copy of my photo goes on the club website, the down side is that they also took a photo of me accepting my book - and I hate having my photo taking.

I took this photo through our porch window and if you click on the photo to enlarge it you can see the transposed image of the flowers in lots of the raindrops.

I'm enjoying this competition malarkey more than I thought I would and am putting my recent successes down to beginners luck.

Next week we are off to Southend to a studio to take portrait shots. I've never taken any photos like that before so it should be really interesting and informative.

Camera Club

Last night was Camera Club night where we had an amazing talk and slide show entitled "In Search of The Magnificent Seven" given by Phil Shaw. Phil is an ecologist and photographer and you can find out more about him here naturephotopro.

The talk was about Phil's search for his top seven animals and birds of North America and the trips he has taken to photograph them. We saw some superb shots of Polar Bears, Bison, Golden Eagle, Brown Bear, Moose, Cougar and Wolves all shot in some of remotest parts of North America, in freezing conditions.
If you ever have the chance to see one of Phil's exhibitions of hear one of his talks I would highly recommend it. If not you will have the chance to see some of his filmwork on Autumn Watch over the next few months on the BBC.
Next week is a knock out competition of 6x4 prints of the summer 2011, where two photos go head to head and we all get a chance to vote for which one we like best, the winner then goes through to the next round. So I'm off to choose my best six summer prints of 2011

Camera Club!!

Last week I mentioned that I was off to Camera Club. My friend Ruth and I did go and the next day I wrote a long post on paper in the the car whilst waiting for Tomas to finish nursery that I was supposed to post later on the day but didn't! I wrote about how daunting it was to walk in to a room full of men sitting round the table, the nice surprise to find that there was in fact another woman there too. Everyone was really friendly and welcoming and there was a chance to discuss all the future events that the club will hold over the next year. These include lots of practical evenings, talks from outside speakers and competitions....which leads me on to this week meeting.

This was an open competition and Ruth and I decided we would enter, so I spent the week looking through photos trying to whittle it down to the final three. Which was hard going I still had at least six that I wanted to show and that was at 7pm this evening!!!

You could either show your photos as prints or digital images and initially I wanted to have them printed but after several hiccups relating to low resolution, buying mounts and actually getting the prints printed I opted to show mine as digital images.

First off it was the printed photos and having felt okay about showing my images I was now feeling rather nervous and wanted to hide my memory stick back in my bag. The quality of the photos around the table was amazing. Each print was placed on a lighted a frame and the judge gave a critique of each photo, giving both the positives and negatives and also what could be done to improve the shot.

There were some fabulous shots from superb landscapes to portraits.

Next up it was the digital images, I finally made my choice then desperately wanted to change my mind at the last minute but it was too late those poor unselected photos would have to wait for another competition.

Mine were the last to be shown, by which time all I wanted to do was hide under the table, but first up was this photo that I took of Jack in the woods the judge was complimentary and gave a good synopsis of where and when she thought the photo was taken. Although she felt there wasn't much going on in the shot and it would be a good one to show any future girlfriends of Jack's. She scored this a 7/10.

 Next up was this photo of Tomas whom she thought was a girl!!!! I really need to cut off those curly locks but I just don't want to so I shall have to put up with him being mistaken for a girl for a little longer!!!

The judge felt that there was more going on in this photo, but would have liked to have seen more of her(his) face but understood that this probably wasn't possible due to the length of her(his) arms!!! The judge didn't give this one a score as she wanted to hold it back to compare it to others at the end.

 

Finally there was this cropped picture of some pretty flowers in my back garden when I first saw this on the screen I thought I'd made a big mistake choosing it but the judge really seemed to like it, pointing out how you are drawn into the two flowers in the foreground and how it sweeps round to the others which are more out of focus. She felt that the flowers at the top of the page were quite highlighted and I could have either added more pink in or moved the flowers in situ or even added more green to highlight the flowers in the foreground.

The judge also asked to keep this image back too and compared it along with the photo of Tomas and three others by other photographers finally giving me a mark of 9 out of 10 for the photo of Tomas and 91/2 for the photo of the pink flowers.

To say I was gobsmacked would have been an understatement it was really nice to have a critique my photos and although it was really nerve wracking at the time I'm really glad I did it.

Ruth did really well too getting 8 out of 10 for all her photos.

I'm under no illusions that i will get any where near the same marks for the next competition but it was a great experience and I shall definitely do it again.

Anyone elso have any experience of competitions or camera clubs?