External Competition Secretary’s Report, 2009-2010

by Chris Noble Sat May 29, 2010 8:22 pm

External Competition Secretary’s Report, 2009-2010

Building on previous years the club has had some very good results this year which reflects the improving standard of the members’ work.

The first competition should have been on Tuesday 17 November, the Chester Photographic Society Inter-Club Competition. Last year we came second overall in a mixed print and slide format but the competition this time would be prints only, 4 colour and 2 mono. Unfortunately, due to the incompetence of a member of the committee whom I would prefer not to embarrass by naming, we failed to enter thinking that it was (as last year) the following Tuesday.

On Monday 8 March we held the Mold DPI Slide Battle. The judge, Colin Ratcliffe from the Heswall Photographic Society, did an excellent job with an outstanding set of images, clearly finding the ranking of the last half dozen formidable. This year there was a better turnout of 7 clubs which together with the nature of the knockout scoring system made for a dramatic ending with Hoylake PS winning and Mold coming a close second, as we did last year. Mold had a consolation though with Anne-Marie Metcalfe picking up the Winning Image Medal for her Bald Eagle. It was great to see over sixty people in the room which contributed to making the place 100% warmer than usual, plus we had enough seats, just, following our recent acquisitions. The catering and raffle went smoothly and the projection seemed perfect. Typical of the messages I received was:

May I thank you and the members of your club for going to the trouble of organising the battle and inviting our club to join in. The standard of the images, the character of the judge and the way it was run lead to a very enjoyable evening and we are looking forward to the next encounter. Please thank your committee and members on our behalf.

Several (envious?) comments were heard about the quality of our projector and the size of our screen and a subsequent flurry of eMails between us and the Chester club resulted in them buying the same set-up that we have. In these discussions we further discovered that (a) our set up is virtually the same as the Royal Photographic Society's (!) and (b) Mike MacNamee (our Xmas Lecturer) suggested to one of the Chester guys visiting Focus that the Mold set up was very good and that they should buy a Canon projector, despite the fact that he was lecturing for Epson!

Our next outing was on Sunday 28 March to Llandudno for the North Wales Photographic Association Inter-Club Battle. This was prints and DPI’s with four entries per club in each of the two sections and judged and marked out of 20, the judge being Anne Sutcliffe from Smethwick PS. Out of the 12 clubs competing we were 7th in the prints behind leaders Dwyfor (Abersoch), our best scorer being Stuart Worrall with 19 points. In the DPI we came mid-table behind Dwyfor (again), our best scorer being Kevin Hirst with a 19. Overall we were middling (compared with 2nd last year) with Dwyfor winning outright. This is the big event for North Wales clubs, it’s their championship, and fortunately not all the trophies went west of the Conway river: Norman Colbourne of Marchwiel got the Mono Print Trophy, Jane Edgar of Ruthin got the Colour Print Trophy and Jill Bunting of Rhyl got the DPI Trophy.

Tuesday 13 April was the Whitby Club Photographic Society exhibition at the old Shell Club in Whitby near Ellesmere Port. Each year they invite clubs from the area to display prints and "slides" at their Annual Exhibition, 6 prints, 6 DPI’s which are judged and marked, with trophies for the winners. Each club chooses its own themes for its panels and for logistical reasons (the pictures would be away for a few weeks) I chose Tree Triptychs. The judge for both sections was Frank Hutchinson from the North Cheshire PS (Poynton) and he placed us 6th out of 8 in both sections, not a good result, although the spread of points was so small that a slight change in score could have made a big change in placings. The idea of using multiple images on mounts wasn’t out of place though because Whitby won the print trophy for the first time ever (ie decades) with 6 diptychs. Hoylake won the DPI panel.

I extended my brief this year by suggesting that some of us may try our luck in the Amateur Photographer of the Year Competition. This is a 10 month affair with just 1 picture per month required. Each round has a theme and subjectwise what they require is typical of the images we see each month in our monthly competitions so it shouldn’t need much additional work to submit an entry. Results of the first 2 rounds show that we have had no success at all yet but are we discouraged? Of course not.

On a brighter note there is an area where members of the club have had success this year: in raffles. I was fortunate in Ruthin and Llanrwst to win a bottle of wine and chocolates with free tickets given to me as the guest speaker; and Rishi Sharma was successful in Rhyl (a basket of goodies) and Whitby where he snapped up a massive box of biscuits. I suppose that makes up for him never seeming to win a raffle prize in Mold.

Thanks to everyone who has put forward their work for selection - we have tried to use as many different workers as we can in the various competitions and for the use of these pictures we thank everyone.

Andy Polakowski