Blog

This week’s meeting of the photographic society was part one of the Portfolio of the Year competition.  This year, because of the large number of submissions, the judging will be  taking place over two meetings with the first being the judging of projected digital images (PDIs) and the second meeting, on 12^th April, for prints.

Our judge this week was Dave Best LRPS a long-standing committee member of Hexham and District Photographic Society and a judge of some experience.  He acknowledged that the collection of 72 images were of a high standard and as the evening unfolded those present would concur with that.

The Portfolio of the Year competition allows competitors to submit up to four PDIs but with a restriction that each image must be of a different genre.  The genres include for example, Nature, Creative, Landscape, Mono, Portrait, Sport, Photo-journalism etc.  This is challenging for our members, several of whom specialise in perhaps one or two genres. It is quite revealing to discover that accomplished Nature or Landscape photographers are often very good in other fields of photography.

The winner of the competition, which is determined by the combined score of all the entries, was Alan Walker whose submission included a portrait of a ‘down and out’ sitting against a graffitied wall in Belfast (who was actually a very good actor/photographer/model and a member of our club!).  It was called Just a Statistic. Other images of Fighting Sea Eagles, a dramatic landscape entitled Storm over the Dolomites and a top scoring sport image of a head-on shot of a long jumper completed the winning submission.

 

The ‘down and out’ was actually Bob Given, who was second equal in the competition with Ade Gidney. Bob’s monochrome and quite dramatic image of three women posing as ‘The Management’ was the overall best image of the night.

 

Ade Gidney’s images included a beautiful view of mist over White Moss

 

The best natural history image was a superb pin-sharp and very colourful portrait of a Golden-fronted Woodpecker by Ronnie Gilbert.

 

Jo Knight, who specialises in very artistic and creative images submitted the winning Still Life image called Gravity.  It was of a bowl of apples with an apple in mid-air, apparently falling into it.

 

Julie Walker’s studio portrait, Holly in Green was of a well known red haired model wearing a very ornate green dress. The very detailed image with perfectly captured and portrayed skin tones won the best Portrait of the competition.

 

David Woodthorpe

On Wednesday 22nd March we had a wonderful presentation given by award winning photographer Tim Pile. Tim is a member of Smethwick Photographic Society. His specialism is in fine art images of women taken in the open air. His aim in his own words is to “capture the beauty of the female form in the manmade and natural environment”. A unique characteristic of his work is that his model usually only occupies a very small part of the overall image thus emphasising the grandeur of the backdrop.

 

Tim started the evening by talking about his photographic journey which began in 2008. He said that at that point in his life he was too shy to take photographs of people. However, this changed as his confidence grew as his photography developed. In the early days he experimented with different types of photography including infrared. He quickly moved on to taking portraits of women and developed his own style through contrasting the curves of the female body with the geometrical lines of the manmade world.

 

In pursuit of this Tim has taken images in some seemingly unpromising places. These include derelict buildings, empty office blocks, a derelict railway station, a disused swimming pool, an old nightclub, and an abandoned hydro-electric power station. He very rarely takes studio images and even then he prefers to use natural light.

 

The second half of Tim’s talk was dedicated to his collaboration with a particular model whom he met in 2014. Their partnership has led him to photograph outdoors in many different locations both in the UK and abroad. Their travels have taken them to Scotland, Ireland, Portugal, Norway, Iceland, Italy, Corsica and France amongst others. Some of his favourite settings include moss covered rocks, coastal scenery, woodlands, volcanic lava fields and waterfalls. He carries out extensive research before settling on a particular location and most shoots involve a very early morning start. His priority is always for the wellbeing and safety of the model. In cold locations his model is only required to pose for a few minutes before warming up.

 

A particular aspect of Tim’s photography is the unusual angles that he sometimes photographs from. Many of his most striking images are taken from above. He experimented with different angles from the outset of his photographic journey. Attention to detail is also paramount and he will often spend half an hour or more setting up a shot before taking a single image.

 

Tim illustrated his talk with a huge number of superb prints including those that made up his successful Royal Photographic Society Associate and Irish Photographic Federation Fellowship panels. It was a master class in fine art photography and a fascinating and most enjoyable evening.

Julie Walker