Category: Club night summary

Last week the first external competition was held ‘Park street landscape cup’ with 10 clubs including ourselves competing for the honours. Our history hasn’t always been good in this particular competition where we often come across other clubs with greater pedigree in landscape photography. However spurred on by our growing success in recent external competitions and some careful selection we fielded a very well received set of Images. We ultimately finished a very honourable 3rd on the night, only missing out by a few points from the eventual winners. We were also the only club to score 2 x 20s in the competition from Amanda Culley and Gordon Calder with their excellent Images. Overall a good result for the club and further prove of our growing strength in external competitions.

Thank you to all the members who had Images representing the club for this competition, making it a great overall team effort. We made a bit more club history by beaming this Zoom competition into the hall for us to watch together. We had good visuals on the large screen and perfect sound for the broadcast. It was great to give a collective cheer as the Croxley entries were shown and critiqued by the judge.

Having proved the technology, we would like to expand the use of Zoom broadcasts into the community centre hall for our next speaker David Clapp with his presentation ‘ Images with Impact’ on the 4th November giving everyone a chance to watch in the hall together. Looking forward to our first print competition for nearly two years in the hall this week!

See everyone on Thursday

Steve

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After four weeks back in the Community centre hall, we returned to Zoom for last week’s presentation. Keith Snell was our guest speaker, broadcasting from his home in the Lake District. His talk had the Intriguing title of ‘But is it art’ sharing with us his take on ‘representational’ and ‘Impressionistic’ photography and art. A very Interesting and Inspiring presentation, with Keith showing many fine examples of his own work. In particular his passion for abstract and ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) photography.

We are back in the hall this week where we will be creating another first for the club by showing ‘live’ view on our big screen of ‘The park street landscape cup’ in which we will be competing to try and win the competition. It will be great to meet together to cheer on our entries and compare our work with other clubs during the evening.

The following week we have another landmark where after nearly two years, we will be holding our first print competition back in the hall. It’s an ‘open’ competition with up to three entries per person. It will be brilliant to have physical prints on show back in the hall for the judge to critique. Personally, I think to produce a print for competition is a very satisfying experience and although a bit more effort, it is overall a rewarding achievement.

Look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday

Steve

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It’s now been four weeks since we returned to our hall at the Community centre. It has been great to establish face to face meetings again and also to welcome back valued former members who were not so comfortable with Zoom meetings.

Last week we held our first league ‘set subject’ PDI competitions. The subjects were ‘Paths and roads’ and ‘In the kitchen’. Some really good Interesting Images were produced by our talented membership, giving the visiting Judge Alan Taberer plenty to consider in his judgement of awarding points. As always members can see the higher scoring Images on the excellent club website Image gallery.

During the lockdown period of our season’s we managed to present some great speakers where Zoom enabled us to have presentations within our financial budget from much greater distance than normal. I think the furthest was Georgia!

We have continued to book some outstanding presenters for this season also via Zoom and this week is no exception with Keith Snell presenting his ‘But is it Art’ with Keith giving his view on abstract photography. I’m sure this presentation will provide lots of Inspiration for our Individual photography. So we are not in the hall this week, but a great opportunity to tune in on Zoom to enjoy the presentation. Details to join the meeting are in the members area of our website.

We have a few more outstanding guest speakers through Zoom dotted through the programme this season, but primarily we are now back operating safely in the hall with a great social atmosphere which hopefully will continue as the World gets back to some kind of normality.

Look forward to seeing everyone on Zoom this Thursday.

Steve

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One of the many good things about our camera club is the challenge of discovering something new with our photography. Last week at our first workshop of the new season we had the opportunity to submit Images that represented an ‘Intimate landscape’. This subject is for a future external competition to be held in March 2022. Our objective on the night was to find Images that best represented this subject whilst gaining a greater understanding of the subject matter. We had a tremendous response with over 50 Images being submitted by the membership.

We viewed the submissions on the night with much debate on whether they best fitted the requested subject brief. Ultimately we decided on 15 Images to consider against the 6 required Image entries for the competition. Thank you to everyone who put their Interpretation on this quite tricky subject and submitted Images to make this enjoyable workshop held at the community centre possible.

While we are on the subject of ‘Challenge’ this week we hold our first set subject PDI competition with the themes ‘Paths and Roads’ and ‘In the Kitchen’ which we are sure will once again bring out many Innovative Interpretations of the topics and as always prove a difficult task for the visiting judge to separate and award points with so many excellent entries.

Look forward to seeing everyone on Thursday

Steve

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After nearly two years it was great to hold our first PDI league competition back in our hall at the community centre last Thursday. With 45 entries in the open competition and judged by the experienced Kathy Chantler, it gave us a really enjoyable night. It was also great to see the membership have lost none of their flair by producing a wide range of topics within the competition. A range of really creative Images were entered giving the judge a difficult task to allocate and award league points.

Once again, In these difficult times the meeting was held in a responsible way, with spaced chairs and extra ventilation etc with everyone attending the meeting operating in a respectful way towards each other. Great to have the open communications again, which meeting at the hall brings and will add to our weekly meetings to our advantage. We hope to welcome back more of our original membership in the coming weeks.

Looking forward to our ‘Intimate landscape’ review this Thursday, where a large part of the evening will be enjoying Images and getting greater understanding of this topic for this external competition held later in the season.

See you on Thursday Steve

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Last Thursday we were finally able to hold a face to face meeting back in the Community centre hall. After all this time of not being able to meet in person as a group, it was a welcome event to see each other back in our club home. The well attended meeting followed current Covid advice, with spaced out chairs and extra ventilation through the hall etc.

It was particularly good on the night to see a few members who were not comfortable with the Zoom arrangement returning. It would be great over the next few weeks to reunite all our original members back together in the hall.

It was a great atmosphere for our annual awards night with a well constructed excellent slide show provided by Vanessa, as the successful authors were presented with their accolades. Thank you to everyone who entered competitions last season and provided such a high standard of entry. Congratulations to the authors who were featured on the night for their fine photography work in both cup competitions and the Individual leagues. Thank you to Rod Lacey for his good humour and support during the presentations.

We now have our first PDI open competition of the season this week, with a judge back in the hall! We are really looking forward to seeing everyone’s entries and feel sure we will have an enjoyable night back together as the season’s competitions get underway.

The week after on the 30th September we are holding a preparation evening for the all new ‘Intimate Landscapes’ which we have entered. A Competition run by Tring CC in March 2022. (Further details in the newsletter)

See you on Thursday Steve

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It’s great to back with our new season now underway. Last week we commenced the season with our delayed AGM, which was well attended on Zoom. Thank you to everyone that tuned in on the night for our slightly formal but necessary event in the running of the club.

We are delighted to confirm the election of the committee which has a couple of changes from last season. John Flynn has decided to stand down from his role as Vice Chairman. We thank John for his contribution to the club and will miss his vast experience in photography on the Committee.

The good news is that John will still continue as a member of the club. We are therefore pleased to announce the appointment of George Purchase as the new Vice Chairman.

We welcome David Eckland as a new Committee member who we are sure will greatly contribute to the team. In addition David will be supporting the external competition Secretary Stuart Craig who has recently relocated. We are also pleased to announce that Arron Dowdeswell has agreed to be co opted by the committee to support on technical issues during the season. You can read more details about the AGM evening which Includes various reports on last season, on the club website.

We have a great team at the helm and ready for another really enjoyable season, starting with a great talk on astonishing abstract photography on Zoom this Thursday. This is followed by our first night back in our hall since March 2020! Where we are really looking forward to meet face to face with everyone at our awards night.

Steve

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Our final competition night of the season., with 15 images entered in the mono image and 33 in the colour competition.

Congratulations to Steve and Gordon who were the eventual winners.

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It’s a lovely time of the season when we review the highest scoring Images from this season’s competitions. It’s a time when you realise the great and creative work that has been produced by our talented membership.

The first best of the year competition for best PDI was held with 44 selected Images scoring 19 or 20 points. The judging was by the excellent Amanda Wright who gave Inspiring critique to help choose the ultimate winner of this trophy competition.

It really was a high standard to select from with a large number of Images being held back for final review. Congratulations to Amanda Culley for her excellent Image ‘Tree lined path’ for winning this years PDI of the year trophy.

Many thanks to everyone who entered the competitions throughout the season to enable such a good contest of this standard.

A lot of the Images will be put forward into external competitions next season which we will be proud to enter.

We now look forward to our print of the year competition and finding the best colour and monochrome prints.

Steve

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Our last workshop evening of this season was themed for members to share Images and to explore the creative decisions behind the processing, to create the ultimate authors vision. We had two presentations on this subject. One from myself showing before and after Images, starting with the raw file and comparing with the finished Image.

Explaining the Inspiration and thoughts in achieving the final Image. Mike Brankin gave an excellent presentation, also showing Images whilst demonstrating the build up to achieving his vision for his successful work. (Unfortunately cut short through loss of signal from his camper van in Scotland!)

As a bonus, Cat Humphries gave the members an update on her recent change of camera and the challenge of lighting in drama group productions. Showing some wonderful theatre Images while explaining her issues and ultimate resolution.

It was reported that both Rebecca Berman and Stuart Craig had achieved highly commended accolades for their recent entries into the PAGB competition for photographs taken on a camera phone. Many congratulations to both for their achievement.

Another enjoyable evening spent celebrating our passion for photography.

Steve

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