Weymouth Camera Club Meeting Reports
17 Oct 2011 - Open Competition
We welcomed Mike Furness as our judge for the first open competition of season. There was an excellent response from members with a total of 88 images and it was good to see so many new members entering.
Mike was very attentive to sharpness, liking photographs which were sharp all the way through. He also liked close cropping (demonstrating on several occasions, the effects of a tighter crop) and preferred people portrayed in the pictures to be facing the camera and smiling. He explained that one of his criteria for judging was whether he thought a photograph would look good on his wall.
Mike ended the evening by showing us some examples of his own work.
05 April 2011 - Poole Battle
The Poole Battle between Weymouth and Dorchester has taken place every year since 1969 and we are now onto our second shield.
The clubs take it in turns to host the evening and this year it was the turn of Poole to invite Weymouth to their meeting. 13 members from Weymouth attended and enjoyed a lovely evening with a delicious buffet.
The competition takes the form of two open competitions. Each club submits 15 digital images and 15 prints. The judge is not aware which image comes from which club. This year the Judge was Brian Tarling, a lively and entertaining judge and speaker who made us all laugh, whilst giving every image plenty of attention. Brian was particularly aware of backgrounds - out of focus, uncluttered and complementing the subject. He emphasised the importance of correct exposure, good lighting and of diagonals leading right into the corner of the picture. He felt that some photographs might be more effective if they were 'flipped' and suggested we experiment with that, getting someone else to give an opinion on what worked best. He also stressed the importance of a good, clear title to help a judge understand what an image was all about.
At the end of the evening, Poole ended Weymouth's 13 year run of victories with a decisive win! Their club had entered a superb set of images and their win was well-deserved.
Congratulations to our club members who scored tens for their images - Danny Dench with a 10 each for 'The Stare' and 'Resting' and Mick Rose for 'Into the Mist', and thanks to all those who made the journey to Poole for such an entertaining evening.
Next year's Battle will be held at Weymouth on 3rd April - and obviously we want to win the shield back!
22 March 2011 - John's Latest Print Work - John Tilsley
John is a regular visitor to our club, often coming to judge our work. Tonight, however he had brought some of his own work for us to see. We were treated to a selection of beautifully crafted monochrome panels, on themes close to John's heart.
John started off by telling us that you could not be a judge unless you were also an active photographer - and he never went anywhere without a camera. He is a dark room photographer first and foremost but had recently bought a digital camera. He likes working on projects rather than one-off photographs. He believes that a series of photographs helps you to understand a photographer's thought process, the way he works, what makes him tick. He likes images that could be shown together as a panel and nowadays produces work with exhibitions in mind rather than competitions.
To begin with John showed us work from 10 years ago when a toned monochrome with just one colour was fashionable. These are no longer acceptable as monochromes have to be black and white only. He showed us photographs of phone boxes (one of his favourite themes as an example) and reminded us of the importance of giving a sense of scale in pictures. He then moved on to a panel of photographs he had taken in New Zealand, capturing the natural beauty of the lakes, coasts and mountain ranges. He wanted to emphasis the clouds, the emptiness and the size of the natural phenomena - dunes, mountains, waterfalls etc. For his beach scenes he showed how important wet sand was for reflections.
In the second half we were treated to photographs of John's current project - panoramic views of Paris, with a series of photographs complementing each other. Again we saw John's attention to detail and his love of scale - tiny people against huge monuments and clever juxtapositions of people with their environment. He showed us how to break the rules - the subject of a photograph does not always have to be on the third and square prints can work well if mounted properly. He touched on the importance of careful mounting and of giving a photograph 'room to breathe' within a mount.
Throughout the talk, however, John reminded us not to copy him but to develop our own style as a photographer. When we take a photograph we should always ask ourselves what the point of it is. At the end of the day we make the photographs for ourselves, not for a judge and it is important that our identity and our personality show through.
As ever, John was an entertaining speaker. He gave us sound advice and impressed us with his own photography. It was good to see John's own work and fascinating to see how a good panel was put together. We look forward to seeing how his Parisian project develops.
08 March 2011 - Open Competition
Penny Piddock joined us at the Centenary Club to judge our second open competition of the year.
Penny treated us to a good-humoured, positive style of judging and was very attentive to the good points in photographs, whilst providing valuable feedback on areas which could be improved. Before she began, Penny explained to us that she was the sort of judge who looked for the emotive rather than the technical side of a photograph, reminding us that it is the photographer who sees and takes the picture and it is the photographer who makes the picture, not a set of rules. She used the example of figure skating versus freestyle skating - and her style of judging was free-style!
Penny was looking for well-seen photos and she emphasised the importance of taking a 'different' fresh image when visiting popular tourist attractions such as Stourhead, Venice or Central London - which she was well aware was easier said than done!
She was looking for atmosphere, for photographs that told a story, as well as great composition and judicious cropping. Detail was important and she was very alert to those important small details which make a good picture great. She picked up on poor exposure, over-saturation, blown-out highlights and cluttered backgrounds, stressing the importance of isolating the subject. She was also very conscious of space in a photograph and the careful balance between having too much 'dead' space around an image, yet still giving the subject room to move. She praised some images for skilful use of difficult lighting conditions and appreciated good creative work.
Penny also gave advice on presentation; she suggested that number of images would have been more successful if they had been larger; she also commented on the adverse effect of over-large borders and of coloured mounts which did not bring out the best in a picture.
Penny was an entertaining judge who spotted the good points in every picture, and drew our attention them, whilst giving helpful and friendly advice on how to improve the aspects which did not work so well. Visit our galleries to see the results, together with the placed and highly commended images of the Open Competition.
01 March 2011 - A History of Photography by Sid Jones
Sid Jones made a welcome return to the club on 1st March, this time as a speaker not a judge.
The first half of the evening was a talk on 'The History of Photography'. Sid explained that this was a subject which had fascinated him since he took an 'A' level in photography at evening class a few years ago. He projected a series of images to show how photography had developed through the 19th century up until 1890, and followed this with a show of carefully chosen examples of the work of four of 20th century's defining photographers - Alfred Eisenstaedt, Henri Cartier-Bresson , Ansel Adams and the master of the 'indecisive moment', Elliott Erwitt. Sid's talk was full of amusing and astute observations as well being as a great lesson on some of the masters of monochrome, street and landscape photography.
In the second half Sid treated us to a show of his photography including some wonderful nature shots which impressed everyone. There were lots of admiring noises from the audience throughout. He explained that some of the pictures had been taken on a photography holiday with Guy Edwards and the Cantrilles and that his had felt his efforts were rather humble in comparison! We disagreed! Sid's down-to-earth, witty approach was well-received by the club and we enjoyed seeing a very wide range of photography as well.
22 February 2011 - 'Six of a Kind' and 'Close-Up' Competitions
Brian Pettit came to judge our annual 'Six of a Kind' and 'Close-Up' Competitions.
Two trophies are awarded for 'Six of a Kind' one for the Digital entries, the other for the prints. Members can enter either a digital set or a print set, but not both and the scores do not count towards the annual league totals. The idea is that members produce a panel of 6 photographs on a theme (with prints no large than 7inches by 5inches and mounted on a single board). There must be a single title and the link should be clear. The panel should be balanced and worked as a sequence or as a series of linked images.
Brian looked for sets of print or DIs in which all 6 images were of an equally high standard. He commented on the sharpness of images, depth of field and the importance of straight horizons. He also pointed out that some photographs were over-saturated and emphasised the importance of natural colours.
Brian then went on to judge the 'Close-Up' competition for which members could enter two prints and two digital images. For this competition the definition is a photograph taken from the closest position possible but without necessarily using a macro lens.
Brian felt it was very important to distinguish between a true close-up and a photograph which had been cropped in to make it appear close-up. He explained that in a true close-up you should be able to see all the detail whereas a crop tends to loose detail and he judged accordingly. He also explained that, in his opinion, if you are taking a photograph of a natural object, then you should choose a perfect specimen. He paid great attention to depth of field, detail and said the whole image should be sharp and not fall away or be out of focus away from the centre. Again he paid particular attention to light and commented on images he found over-exposed, over-saturated or too busy.
This was an interesting evening with some heated discussion regarding the definition of close-up photography and whether or not only pictures of perfect specimens should be entered for competitions. As always with club competitions, the judge's decisions may not please everyone as every judge has his own criteria for judging - but this is the way with every competition and the judge's decisions must be accepted. Visit our galleries to see the results, together with the placed and highly commended images of the Close Up Competition and Six of a Kind Competition.
15 February 2011 - Rod Pattinson
Rod Pattinson of Cackleberry frames visited the club to give a talk on framing and mounting. He brought many examples of his work with him and gave some practical demonstrations which will be helpful to those club members who want to have a go at framing their own pictures. As photographers mounting pictures for displays and competitions, his advice about buying mount board, backing board and glass was especially helpful. Few of us had realised the damage that poor quality mount board could inflict on our pictures and we now know how to ensure our mount board is acid free.
The club were grateful to Rod for coming along to share his expertise and found it interesting to have a practical demonstration. We will all be inspecting our mount board very carefully from now on.
13 February 2011 - Inter Club DPIC
On Sunday 13th February 4 club members ventured out in the rain to attend the annual WCPF Inter-Club Digital Projected Image event in Exeter. Along with 50 other clubs from the south-west, we had entered 20 digital images to be marked by 3 judges. This was a mammoth under-taking with 1020 images to be viewed and judged over the course of a day. The judges certainly had their work cut out and only had seconds to mark each image. It is also a very popular and social event, and Exeter Corn Exchange was packed with representatives from all the region's clubs.
The competition was won by our neighbours, Dorchester Camera Club, and Plymouth Camera Club was in 2nd place. We came joint 23rd out of 51 - which we were pleased with as it was a far better result than last year. We were also delighted that one of our members, Danny Dench, was awarded a 'Highly Commended' for his photograph of a Bearded Tit. Well done Danny! For more information and the winning pictures, visit the Western Counties DPIC webpage.
08 February 2011 - Shadows Competition
We welcomed John Tilsey back to judge our shadows competition. John is a regular visitor to our club and his feedback is greatly appreciated by members. We all learn a lot from John's experience and his careful critique.
John began by commenting that there were strong similarities between some of the digital images and prints, but also a very diverse range of themes. He stressed he was looking for photographs in which the shadow was the main focus and did rule out some very good images on the grounds that the shadow was not the main focus. He suggested that many of us should crop more heavily to really focus on the subject in question. He also told us that, as a strong shadow was a picture in itself, it was not always necessary to include the image that made the shadow - a point few of us had considered! He reminded us that with shadow photography, a low angle often added drama and impact to a picture and that we should be looking for strong lines, perhaps on the diagonal.
He was particularly looking for dark shadows which added excitement to an image and which 'told a story'. Finally he reminded us of a statement by Clive Haynes to the effect that every photograph belongs half to the photographer and half to the viewer - and for a photograph to work the viewer must be able to relate to a picture and add his own interpretation.
Although our subject was 'Shadows', John's advice can be applied to most photographic subjects. It is well known that no-one ever agrees with a judge, but John gave a lot of very useful tips to take home and remember for future competitions. Visit our galleries to see the placed and highly commended images of the Shadows Competition.
25 January 2011 - Summer Outings Competition
This evening was a fun night, as two of our own members, Ted Toop and Maurice Trembath, took the floor as Judges for our Summer Outings Competition. This is a non-league competition and only photographs taken during club outings the previous summer are permitted. Our outings had been to Radipole Lake, Pirates Cove, St George's Churchyard on Portland and to watch the lifeboat rescue display during Lifeboat Week, and any images not taken on these outings were disqualified. The club were greatly amused by Maurice and Ted's comments as they marked each image out of 5 to give a total of 10. The eventual winner was Sue Minns with a photograph taken during the Lifeboat display and she was awarded the Summer Outings Cup.
18 January 2011 - John New - A Journey Through The Alps
The Club very much enjoyed a talk by our own John New, accompanied by his wife, Stella. John and Stella had prepared an excellent audio-visual presentation about their rail holiday to Switzerland to travel on the mountain railways. We followed them on their journey across Europe and were then treated to some stunning pictures of the mountain scenery they saw. The show had been put to music, which complemented it perfectly. John admitted that months of work had gone into preparing it but the result was worthwhile and everyone agreed with Gerry Comleys's vote of thanks when he suggested it was the best audio-visual talk we had had in a very long time. Indeed we were all quite envious and a number of members asked John and Stella for further information about their holiday in the interval.
07 December 2010 - Geometric Shapes Competition
The geometric shapes competition was something of a challenge and it was interesting to see how different club members had interpreted the theme.
Our judge was Stuart Morris who chose to interpret the subject quite strictly. He emphasised the need for careful cropping, marking images down for cutting off parts of objects - or for leaving too much empty space around the subject. He was also attentive to colours, and felt that the colour combinations in some photographs were not complementary or did not provide enough contrast with the background. He was looked for strong geometrics, sharp, distinctive images with plenty of visual impact and careful composition.
Stuart gave us plenty of useful advice and had a hard job selecting the winners from his top rated images. Visit our galleries to see the placed and highly commended images of the Geometric Shapes competition.
30 November 2010 - An Evening with David Boag
David Boag is a favourite visitor to Weymouth and his wildlife talks never fail to entertain. Tonight was no exception with David giving his latest talk taking us through his career as a wildlife photographer, showing us how he had progressed from film and darkroom to digital and Photoshop. He took us through the making of some his most famous images and showed us some of his most successful - and lucrative - work. He also gave us a very tempting taster of his new online course in digital photography and whetted our appetites. Nearly everyone signed up for a free download of the first instalment of the course, due out in early 2011. See www.natural-focus.co.uk
23 November 2010 - Audiovisual show - Antarctica
Luckily it was warm and cosy inside the Centenary Club tonight because Mr and Mrs Price took us on an audio visual tour of the Antarctic and South America following a recent trip. We saw some marvellous natural history photographs including some superb waterfall shots. They also laid on an interesting display of maps and books covering the area of their travels.
16 November 2010 - Nature Competition
On 16th November we held our annual nature competition, this year judged by Barry Welsh. This is one of the most popular of our monthly competitions and it was great to see so many of our new members entering.
Weymouth does not stick to strict definitions of Natural History and allows members to enter photographs on subject such as landscapes and geology. However photographs taken of animals and birds in captivity are not permitted.
Barry was a good judge and consistent in his comments and scores. He was knowledgeable on the subjected depicted, and gave praise where due but also some excellent constructive feedback to help improve our photography.
Barry was looking for 'sparkle' - something that made a photograph stand out from the crowd. He pointed out that many nature photographs can be a little clichéd and that judges see dozens of poppies, bluebell woods and autumn leaves. He was looking for photographs with a different angle or that extra something special. He also advised against cropping too tightly, preferring to see animals, birds and plants in context, showing something of the natural environment. He referred to a number of very tightly cropped images as 'claustrophobic'. He was also very attentive to sharpness and lighting.
There were some suberb images in the competition and Barry had a hard to task to whittle down his held-back photographs to give 3 placings and a highly commended in each section. Visit our galleries to see the placed and highly commended images of the Nature Competition.
13 November 2010 - Kingswood Salver
The day's events were organised by The Western Counties Photographic Federation (WCPF) and held at the village hall in Clyst St Mary just outside Exeter. There were 20 entries from throughout the Western Counties region and the judge was Tom Dodd FRPS from Wales.
The idea of the competition is that each club presents a panel of five images on a linking theme. Each image must be by a different photographer. The title of the theme is not given out, only the title of each photograph and so it is important that theme is obvious to the judge from the photographs and their titles. Themes this year were, as far as we could interpret:
| Derelict architecture | Scenes from a small cove (different times of day, mix of close up and distant) |
| Street Scenes with panned motion blur (Third Place) | Red (variety of subjects) |
| Coastline (monochrome) | Winter woodlands (monochrome) (HC) |
| Everyday objects from past (monochrome) | Plants and flowers (monochrome) (First Place) |
| People (portraits) | Dogs (HC) |
| Steam Trains (monochrome) | Hands - in action |
| People - candid (monochrome) | Architecture |
| Hands making geometric shapes | Abstract (Second Place) |
| Motion Blur (action) (HC) | Light at the End of ... |
| Sunset/sunrise on Dartmoor | Wheels |
The judge was consistent, fair and objective. He gave helpful feedback on every photograph as well as on each panel overall. He looked carefully at the quality of printing and the technical aspects of each photo; he was also very attentive as to whether the photographs gelled as a panel.
It was important that there was an evident, strong linking theme in each panel - but equally important that there should be a degree of variety within that theme and that the style of each individual photographer should shine through. He warned of the pitfalls of mixing monochrome and colour images within the same panel, though there were some panels in which this worked well.
The winning club was Wadebridge, followed by Dorchester in 2nd place and the Phoenix Group of Photographers in 3rd place. Highly commended were Bristol, Barnstaple and Frome Wessex. Individual photographs also won awards and certificates. Here are the top three winning panels:
To view all the panels entered, visit the WCPF website.
In the afternoon we were given a rare opportunity in the Southwest to hear a brilliant talk by Tom Dodd from North Wales. He lives in Snowdonia and is well-known for his mountain photography. He loves photography of all kinds and showed us a selection of prints spanning 40 years of darkroom and digital work. These included landscapes, snow scenes, and mountain landscapes from all over the world including Greenland, birds, flowers, portrait and documentary.
It was interesting that many of his best recent pictures had been taken on a compact camera (a Canon G10). You don't need a DSLR to take great photos! He also showed examples of darkrooms techniques such as split toning and explained how the same effects could be replicated in Photoshop. The photographs were displayed for us to examine later and Tom was a very approachable, friendly speaker. He had lots more to show us but sadly time was limited.
09 November 2010 - Members' Evening
Our first Members' evening of the new season gave four club members a go at being speaker. We were given four very different presentations on different aspects of photographic and AV work currently being under taken by members of our club.
Presentation 1: Stephen Jones - People / Street Photography. Stephen gave a talk and digital presentation on his favourite kind of photography - people and street photography. He drew his most of his examples from the 2010 WOMAD Festival at Charlton Park and the 2010 Festival on the Thames on the South bank. He explained how he talked to people before taking photographs and how he got them to pose. He also reminded members that there is life beyond competitions and by having on-line public albums on flickr and by handing out cards to those people he photographed, he got a wide audience for his work and had it used on websites and in publications.
Presentation 2: Helen Jones - OU T189. Helen has recently completed the OU T189 course in Digital Photography and gave a talk accompanied by a PowerPoint Presentation outlining the various stages of the course, along with the examples of the work she submitted for assignments. A number of club members are considering this, or similar courses.
Presentation 3: Alan Cox - Audio-visual. Alan gave an audio visual presentation of a recent cruise on the Amazon. He showed a series of still and moving images, all accompanied by music. We saw his cruise ships, some of the places he visited and shots from a display of local dancing.
Presentation 4: Polly Dinwoodie - Steam trains. Polly's favourite photographic subject is steam trains and she put together a 'just for fun' PowerPoint presentation of shots of steam trains, large and small, that she had photographed at shows, in Museums and on excursions throughout the British Isles.
01 November 2010 - Wessex Battle
The annual Wessex Battle Photography Competition was held at Dorchester Corn Exchange on Monday 1st November 2010, hosted by last year's winners, Bridport Camera Club.
There were 8 clubs taking part and each club entered a set of 8 images. The photographer's name and image title were projected onto the screen with the photograph, but not the name of their club. Judge Shirley Britton had the difficult job of marking and commenting on every image.
There was tension right to the end as a series of excellent images scored full marks of 10, leaving the field right open. It was all down to the scores in the last round. At the end of the evening Dorchester won by just 1 point over Bridport and Yeovil, who tied for 2nd place. Weymouth came a creditable 6th as there were very few marks separating the clubs. Special congratulation to Sue Minns who scored 10 points for the club with her photograph of a mill. The overall individual winner was Iain Cameron from Dorchester for 'Cheetah'.
Final Scores:
Dorchester: 67
Yeovil: 66
Bridport: 66
Blandford: 61.5
Wimborne: 57.5
Weymouth: 55.5
Beaminster: 54.5
Wareham: 50.5
Next year's battle will be held in the same place on the first Monday in November (TBC) and organiser John Tilsley is hoping that more clubs will enter next year to make an even bigger battle!
26 October 2010 - Open Competition
The first competition of the club year was an Open Competition and Weymouth Camera Club were delighted to welcome back judge Sheila Brown for her 10th visit in 11 years. As always when Sheila judges, we had a relaxed, lively evening with plenty of friendly banter. The entry for both print and digital section was large, with over 40 in each category. Nevertheless Sheila gave each image her full attention and supplied both very useful positive feedback and suggestions for improvement.
Issues that she raised several times were the importance of motion blur to give a feeling of movement; avoidance of bright or burnt out highlights and the visual impact of out-of-focus backgrounds. She didn't like too much clutter. She stressed her dislike of 'back views' of people (preferring to see faces) and reminded us of her personal love of simplicity and colour - in particular her trademark 'little touch of red'.
On several occasions she brought out her secret weapon - two strips of mountboard that she used to show how cropping could have improved some of the prints on show. She also emphasised the choice of relevant titles which can help a judge understand the photographer's intent.
Sheila used the full range of scores available to her and awarded four 10s in each category. The photos awarded full marks were all clear, simple, colourful images, with plenty of visual impact and which she felt were well-seen and which demonstrated considerable skill on the part of the photographer.
Visit our galleries to see the placed and highly commended images of the Open Competition.
19 October 2010 - Travelling WCPF Critique
Weymouth Camera Club members viewed some of the prints entered for the Western Counties Photographic Federation Exhibition, 2010. Rather than simply view the prints exhibition style, club members volunteered to act as judge and give a personal critique of a selection of images, with audience feedback encouraged. This proved popular and as with any competition, club members didn't agree with everything that our judges said, but everything was good natured and it was a good exercise in critique.