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The Society’s First Open Competition of the new season took place via Zoom on the evening of Wednesday 14th October. Our judge was Kevin Hilton from Hexham. Kevin is Vice President of Hexham & District Photographic Society and is a Northern Counties Photographic Federation judge. Twenty-four members each entered three digital images and there was a wide range of photographic genres represented, including nature, macrophotography, creative, landscape, cityscape, travel, portraiture and sport. Kevin was sent the images a fortnight before so he was able to view the images and decide on his scores without having to come to quick decisions on the evening.

Four images by two members achieved the top score of twenty. These were ‘No Turning Back’ by Sue Rugg

 

‘Luskentyre Pony’ by Sue Rugg

 

‘Sitting Gracefully’ by Julie Walker

 

and and ‘Pelican on Ice with Fish’ by Julie Walker.

At the end of the judging Kevin chose ‘Luskentyre Pony’ as his overall winning image.

An impressive score of nineteen was awarded to eleven members for their images and these were ‘In the Enchanted Glade’ by Keith Snell, ‘Christine’ by Julie Walker, ‘Fighting Iguanas’ and ‘Contemplating Nature’ both by Alan Walker, ‘Evening Trees’ by Ann Healey, ‘Dramatically Delicate’ by Carmen Norman, ‘Confrontation’ by Ronnie Gilbert, ‘Red Squirrel in the Snow’ by Carol Minks, ‘Banded Demoiselle on St John’s Wort’ by Tony Marsh, ‘Early Morning at St Michael’s Mount’ by Ken Rennie and ‘Vidaredi’ by Deborah Tippett. A further thirteen images received scores of eighteen and these were ‘Out of the Deep’ by Sue Rugg, ‘White Throated Dipper’ and ‘Rabbit’ by Gordon Train, ‘Cimon della Pala’ by Carmen Norman, ‘Misty Morning Dead Vlei’ by Graham Smith, ‘Juvenile Robin’ by Tony Marsh, ‘Inversion on Derwentwater’ by Michael Rowlinson, ‘End of the Day’ by Marilyn Woodthorpe, ‘Deepdale’ by Ken Rennie, ‘Awakening’ by Deborah Tippett, ‘Reclining in the Evening Light’ by Alan Walker, ‘Mountain Hare by its Form’ by Carol Minks and ‘Family Group’ by Ronnie Gilbert.

David Woodthorpe, the Society’s chairman, thanked the judge for all his hard work awarding the scores and giving a critique of the images, all done under the constraints of a virtual meeting.

Tricia Rayment

All the entered images can be viewed via the gallery page of the website:

2020-2021 Competitions

On Wednesday 7^th October Keswick Photographic Society entered into Battle with Catchlight Camera Club.  With a membership of 65 accomplished photographers and based in Belfast, Catchlight is the current champion club of both the Northern Ireland Photographic Association and of the Irish Photographic Federation. They have also excelled in the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain competitions for several years!

One of the few positive aspects of Covid-19 is that, conducting our meetings via Zoom, the usual obstacles of geographic distance have been removed. So, not only were we able to enter into competition with a Club located in Belfast but our judge for the evening, who lives in the New Forest, was able to conduct her assessment of our images from the comfort of her home. Sue Sibley is a judge of some renown with many photographic distinctions. She is the current President of Southampton Camera Club and Chairman of the Southampton International Exhibition.

Sue was provided with a total of 70 images sorted alphabetically by title of the image so she had no idea from which club the photographs originated. They represented the work of 60 different photographers thereby ensuring that the competition reflected the work of the whole membership of the two clubs.

It is not possible within the limitations of this article to describe the range of photographic genres included within the competition and the incredibly high quality of many of them. Suffice it to say that landscape, natural history, wildlife, both artistic and quirky creative compilations, portraits and the human form, photo journalism and travel images all made appearances.

Sue Sibley gave enthusiastic, incisive, well reasoned and very positive assessments of the images, often indicating how she felt the images could be improved for future competitions, though recognising that some were just brilliant as they were!  She had been asked to score images out of 20 so the maximum score for each club was 700.  We were not surprised to come second in this competition being a club with half the number of members, but we gave them a run for their money. The scores were 606 to Catchlight and 591 to Keswick; a very close call.  Catchlight were worthy winners having submitted some really excellent images right across the board. KPS members can feel very proud of themselves for competing so well against such illustrious company. Five of our entries received the top score of 20. It was a very successful evening all round.

Sue was invited to nominate the best image in four categories and she chose ‘Milky Way, Namibia’ by Keswick’s Richard Jakobson as the best landscape

 

and ‘Three Against One’ by Keswick’s Alan Walker for the best Nature image.

 

Catchlight’s Joanne McGuiness won the best Portrait category with ‘Sunflower’:

 

and Gerald Gribbon also from Catchlight won the Creative Image category and the overall winning image with “Butterfly Rescue”