Martin opened the meeting with his report on the covid situation, pointing out that local infections are officially on the decline but there are still plenty of cases about so we should continue to take precautions. He then ran through coming events and asked members to let him know of any that are taking place during the summer months so they can be added to our summer programme. Maybe, you could post your suggestions on our FB group, and then create an event and invite members. Brian mentioned a few events taking place this weekend, see details below. John, as expected, gave us a detailed critique on each of this season’s award winning entries. His task was to judge 30 prints and 30 digital entries which had been in the top 5 in each of our monthly competitions. He pointed out that, despite the fact that all the entries received high marks to qualify for this evenings winners competition, he would have to score in line with the normal range of marks to achieve a result. He held back 8 entries in both competitions and then revealed the final placings which were as below. John singled out the top two in each competition giving great insight into why he chose them.
Martin opened the meeting by giving us the latest Covid figures in our area which seem to have levelled off a bit and then discussed coming events.
Martin then introduced Norman Marsh, our judge, for the final monthly competition of the current season. As usual, Norman went into great detail when awarding his scores for each entry. It was great to see Barry Freeborn receive the top award for Best Digital Entry, his first ever top place. Well done Barry.
Mike Cook and Martyn Edwards have just completed their best season overall since joining the club. Well done lads, keep those top shots coming!
Monthly Competition! Print (Nature); Digital (Open) Judge: Norman Marsh from Dorchester CC
Norman gave us great feedback on each entry
Prints ‘Nature’ awards as follows:
1st Ken Hocking, ‘Gannet Dispute’
2nd Brian Sweeting, ‘Nuthatch’
3rd Mike Cook, ‘The Congregation’
3rd Peter Owen, ‘Attack Mode’
5th Martyn Edwards ‘Hook Line and Sinker’
Digital ‘Open’ awards as follows:
1st Barry Freeborn ‘Bad Hair Day’
2nd Brian Sweeting ‘The Race is On’
3rd Ian Barrow ‘Arriving at Platform 2’
4th Jane Billing ‘Lesson Time India’
5th Tom Meacham ‘Illuminate’
HC, Brian Sweeting ‘Eyes on the Touchline’
Next Meeting Information
April 5th: Carol McNiven Young - Creative Portraiture
Award winning Carol provides a lecture that dispels some of the mystery of, and talks about, the techniques and methods of creative studio portraiture, with valued advice on composites and backgrounds. Maybe you would like to visit Carol McNiven Young's Website.
This is an online Zoom Lecture* (non-members welcome).
General Information & Future Events
Sunday April 3rd – Whippet Racing at Taunton Polo Ground. Racing starts approximately 10.30.
Best wishes,
Brian
Martin started the evening by thanking Mac Chivers for coming to judge our monthly competition.
Martin welcomed to the meeting returning Member, Aneka Woodman.
Then ran through the covid situation and was pleased to point out that numbers of infections were dropping locally. We continue to socially distance ourselves at meetings, just in case. He then reported on the latest local club support activities, including the Queens Pageant entry and rugby club support.
Monthly Competition! Print (Open); Digital (Glamour) Judge: Mac Chivers, LRPS
What can I say? Mac certainly had his own way of assessing our entries and explained it was only his opinion and on another day results could have been different. In the print section we had an excellent number of entries and it was great to see Martyn Edwards come out on top with his entry ‘The winning Smile’ taken at one of our rugby shoots. Well done Martyn, I think this is your first monthly competition win, keep up the good work! Well done also to our chairman, Martin, who had an excellent evening taking the top two positions in the digital section.
Prints ‘Open’ awards as follows:
1st Martyn Edwards, The winning Smile
2nd Peter Owen, Granada Cathedral Organ
3rd Brian Sweeting, Siskin
3rd Keith Perry, Bent by the Wind
5th Martyn Edwards, Sunflowers
6th Peter Owen, Airbus 380
Digital ‘Glamour’ awards as follows:
1st Martin Barber, Glamour Gambler
2nd Martin Barber, Mirror Check
3rd Peter Owen, Carla
4th Ken Hocking, Shy Girl
5th Jim Goddard, Ready for the Ball
Many other entries received highly commended awards; those members included Martyn Edwards, Keith Perry and Ken Hocking.
Many thanks to all members for supporting our monthly competition which has only one more month to go.
Ideas can be submitted to Dudley for next year’s competition subjects please.
Next Meeting Information
March 1st Tony North BPE4 DPAGB - The Art of Macro A specialist evening sharing Tony’s approach to photographing butterflies, damselflies and other minibeasts in the wild.
Best wishes,
Brian
Martin opened the meeting by giving us details of the coming events. He then asked members for their feelings regarding returning to live meetings due to the rising number of infections across Sedgemoor. The general opinion was that we should return to physical meetings next week, however, Martin asked members to let him know if the situation changes and you have changed your mind about attending next Tuesday. Please let him know because it wouldn't be fair to our speaker who has to travel from the Cornwall/Devon border to have only a handful of people present.
Monthly Competition! Print (Long Exposure); Digital (Open) Judge: Peter Weaver, APAGB, CPAGB, LRPS.
Well, what can I say except what a brilliant judge….;-)) To be fair our judge gave us great feedback on each entry and I am hoping you all took special notice on the comments he made on your entries. He told us that he had singled out the top 5 in each competition and would give their final scores at the end. He also commented on the overall very high quality of our prints and congratulated not only the top 5 but all who had received a 17 in either competition as they could have easily made the top 5.
Print: Subject - Long Exposure
1st Brian Sweeting, ‘Round the Bend’
2nd Peter Owen, ‘Russian Gunship’
3rd Brian Sweeting, ‘Wash Time’
4th Ian Barrow, "Borrowdale Mill"
Digital: subject - Open
1st Brian sweeting, ‘Avocet Landing’
2nd Ian Barrow, ‘Eye on the Prize’
3rd Brian sweeting, ‘The Slipper (Whippet racing’
4th Peter Owen, 'Zombie Art Explosion'
5th Brian sweeting, ‘Touchdown Try'
Well done to everyone who entered.
Best wishes,
Brian
Martin welcomed our speaker and judge for the evening, Jane Kearney.
He followed by welcoming two prospective new members, William and Karen, pointing out that we will do our best to help them in their endeavour to improve their photography skills.
Martin then ran through our next few meeting details before handing over to Jane.
Jane started by reminding members that the results this evening were her personal views and hoped that members would consider her recommendations and find them helpful.
Monthly competition [Prints - Open and Digital – Creative].
Jane was impressed by the entries and, as always, gave us great feedback. Here are the top five in each section:
Print: Subject - Open
1st place Martin Barber ‘Washday’
2nd Brian Sweeting ‘Great Spotted Woodpecker’
3rd Ian Barrow ‘Time to Reload’
4th Martin Barber ‘Meeting’
5th Peter Owen ‘A400M’
Digital: Subject - Creative
1st Tom Meacham ‘Fantasy Falls’
2nd & 3rd places Jim Goddard ‘Life’s Journey’ and ‘Halloween Spirit’
4th Keith Perry ‘Forged from the Forest’
5th place Mike Cook ‘Red Moon’
Jane praised a number of other high quality entries from Barry, Ken H and Ian. Well done everyone, another good monthly competition with prizes well shared out.
Best wishes,
Brian
Martin ran through coming events and confirmed that next week’s meeting would be live at HQ. Martin then introduced Ralph Snook the judge for our second monthly competition of the new season.
Monthly Competition! Print (Mood); Digital (Open) Judge: Ralph Snook.
Ralph stated that he would give high priority to adherence to the subject (mood) when judging the prints. As expected he went into great detail awarding points as he progressed and giving his reasons for deducting points where appropriate. This resulted in some great advice being given which should be kept in mind when preparing your entries for our ‘Members DPIC competition’.
Print: Subject - Mood
1st Brian Sweeting, ‘Happy Days’
2nd Dudley Palmer, ‘Pensive Tom’
3rd Ken Hocking, ‘Eve of the Storm’
4th Peter Owen
5th Ian barrow
Digital: subject - Open
1st Graham Treharne, ‘Midnight Heron’
2nd Ken Hocking, ‘Sidecar racer’
3rd Brian sweeting, ‘Nuthatch’
4th Ian Barrow
5th Thomas Meacham
Well done to everyone who entered. It was a great start to our live meeting competitions and a treat to see some actual prints.
Best wishes,
Brian
28th Monthly competition:
Print (Open); Digital (Power); - Judge Susanne Akerstrom
What a great start to our winter season of competitions.
Despite being a lower entry than previous years due to the reduced number of members, the overall quality was excellent and possibly better than we have previously seen.
Hopefully some members will make a return at our live meetings which starts again next week. I think we can all agree that Susanne did a thoroughly professional job in her very detailed critique. I hope you listened closely to her comments because there was a lot of information there for any of us to learn from and gain insight into what judges look for in an entry.
Prints; subject ‘Open’
1st Martin Barber, ‘Working lives’
2nd Brian Sweeting, ‘Wryneck’
3rd Ian Barrow, Compstone Milky way’
4th Brian Sweeting, ‘The race is on’
5th Keith Perry, ‘Work to the bone’
Digital; subject ‘Power’
1st Graham Treharne, ‘King of the Jungle’
2nd Martin Barber, ‘Power to the Women’
3rd Jim Goddard, ‘Gun and Rose’
4th Tom Meacham, ‘Man Power’
5th Jim Goddard, ‘Bowie’.
Top five in both competitions will be posted to our website 2021/22 competition gallery
Next Week October 5th: Member’s Evening
We return to live meetings
We are asking all members to make a contribution to the evening. Please do your best to show us what you got up to during the closed season.
Please take time to read the above guidelines for a safe return to meetings.
October Monthly competition entries close at this meeting:
Print subject is ‘Mood’; Digital subject is ‘Open’
Both Competitions must be entered in digital form through the Success website which is now open for entries.
Success Website
Please bring the actual prints to the meeting next week or, if unable to attend, make arrangements for collection by another Member living near to you if possible.
General Information & Future Events
October 2nd Bridgwater & Albion Rugby. Kick off 3 pm, if you are interested in coming along please PM me for the password to gain free entry.
October 10th Hill climbing bike racing at Rally’s Cross. When details have been finalised I will post to our FB group for events.
How to join our zoom meeting; ID 86940945021; P'wd = #####
Zoom Meeting
Best wishes, see you all next Tuesday
Brian