The third Set Subject competition of the season, titled ‘Posed or Unposed’, took place on Wednesday 12th February. The judge for the competition was a society member, Dr Keith Snell, who holds distinctions with the Royal Photographic Society, the Federation Internationale de l’Art Photographique and the Photographic Society of America. Keith is a Northern Counties Photographic Federation judge and he judges at both club and inter-club competitions.
For this competition, members could enter up to three prints and, in total, 39 prints were submitted. Keith had chosen the title of the competition and not surprisingly people featured in the vast majority of the images, although a few animal species were also represented. Keith commented on the excellent quality of the prints stating that he would have given practically all of them a score of at least sixteen out of twenty. Because of this he had decided that whilst commenting on the prints he would only announce the marks of those with scores of nineteen or twenty. Keith spent time on each print referring to the composition, technical aspects and, where appropriate, the storytelling quality of the image.
Four prints received top scores of twenty and these were ‘Sat Waiting’ by Julie Walker:
‘Careful – I Have a Reputation’ by David Woodthorpe:
‘The Bygone Hollywood Era’ by Alan Walker:
and ‘Undoubtedly Posed’ by Richard Jakobson:
Nine prints received excellent scores of nineteen and these were ‘A Hard Life’ and ‘Unmasked’, both by Richard Jakobson, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ and ‘Trio Hanging Loose’, both by David Woodthorpe, ‘Little Auk’ and ‘Hey!!! Do You Mind’ both by Carol Minks, ‘Anti-establishment’ by Alan Walker, ‘She’s Nothing to do with Me’ by Julie Walker and ‘Sultry Soul’ by Tom Stenhouse.
At the end of the judging, Keith asked the society members to choose a ‘best in show’ image from the four top scoring prints. A show of hands resulted in Alan Walker’s ‘The Bygone Hollywood Era’ being chosen as the best image. This print was a superbly captured sepia toned image of a young lady, the style and treatment producing an image very reminiscent of the 1940s.
Keith was formally thanked by the Chairman, David Woodthorpe, for his excellent critique of the prints.
Tricia Rayment
All the images entered can be seen on our gallery pages: