External competition – Print and PDI Battle v Batley Camera Club – 30/10/2024

It’s a busy time for interclub competitions and this Wednesday it was our turn to host fellow club Batley CC for our annual battle. As judge for the night we welcomed Tony Sheeky from Halifax who is keen to gain experience as a new judge on the Yorkshire Photographic Union circuit and he gave us a good critique of all the images on show. He had been sent the 24 prints (12 from each club) and 24 images (12 from each club) in advance and it was clear that he had given them a good inspection and much thought on how to rank them. He had been asked to score out of 20 and understandably, given the high standard of work, did not drop below 14. Nevertheless there was a clear winner in both media with Huddersfield PIC leading Batley CC 214 to 209 after the Print round and then leading our visitors in the PDI round by 207 to 198. Overall HPIC scored 421 and Batley CC 407 out of a possible 480 points.

For Batley an image of a male Orange-Tip butterfly gained top marks and for Huddersfield pride of place went to Harry Wentworth’s PDI ‘Standards have declined at the WI’ and Alan Stopher’s print Stephen Joseph Theatre Scarborough both for gaining 20s on the night. Both are pictured here.

Forum - Colour challenge 02/10/24

This was a variation on the single colour challenge which we have run in the past.

Members selected or were given a colour swatch from a paint company and they were asked to go away and create a still life image using a number of objects with the range of colours in the swatch for both the background and items photographed. Members were given the freedom to choose how they created the image. On the night, members images were shown and discussed with input from each author as to what inspired them and how they created their image. There were some great images produced and it was agreed that there would be no voting; just an appreciation of members’ efforts.

Four of the resulting compositions are shown here. You can see that in three cases the swatch was included for reference.

Graham Sykes’ ingenious use of blues

Robert Waterworth’s effort at mainly grayscale tones

Trevor Morris’s still life

Mike Hey’s study in orange

Monthly Challenge 6 – Print – Industry 04/09/24

This month’s print challenge had been inspired by the choice of ‘Industry’ as a set subject in the next season of the West Yorkshire Interclub competition. In the past, visits to local mills would have resulted in many images of day to day activities in a range of industries from textiles to engineering and chemicals. Nowadays such visits are few and far between partly because the businesses don’t exist locally and partly because those that do, put up barriers to groups visiting.

It is therefore more of a challenge to members to show prints which demonstrate the meaning of ‘Industry’, particularly where activities are portrayed. Despite that, three images emerged as the highest point scorers so congratulations to Gary Fenton for his 3rd placed study of copperwork, Sheelagh Davidson for her evocative view of former carpet factory buildings now repurposed for a range of uses at Dean Clough which came 2nd, and Alan Stopher whose ‘In the workshop’ print of an operative welding emerged in first place.

Thanks go to Mark Turner and Tony Pratt who provided the critique.