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.

One hour challenge 07/08/24

The One Hour Challenge has been a feature of our summer programme for some years. On turning up at the club room for an 8pm start we were given a subject to photograph. This year Club President chose ‘Our green and pleasant land’. As it was high summer there was plenty of greenery to choose from but it was not easy to get good captures. We had until 9pm to hand in an SD card with two JPEG images each but the evening sun did not put in an appearance and it was one of the gloomier evenings we have had for outside photography. That gave little time to do any in-camera processing so unsurprisingly attempts at capturing landscape subjects were not going to come up with Competition standard entries.

Nevertheless over 30 images were bought back and duly shown after the refreshment break. Each were shown in pairs and voted on to ‘retain’ or ‘lose’. The number were finally whittled down by shows of hands over a number of rounds until the last two images were projected. Both were taken at Castle Hill in the attempt to get nearer the sun. Congratulations to Robert Waterworth for his 1st place image and hard lines Andy Symons who just missed out.

1st place - Robert Waterworth

2nd place - Andy Symmons

Forum - London Salon 31/07/24

Tonight we had the privilege of showing the Images from the 2023 London Salon. As usual there was a very good mix of all types of photography so that it appealed to everyone at some point. The commentary was once again given by Leigh Preston who has over time become a finely polished commentator for the Salon. The presentation lasted for 1hour and 41 minutes and was informative and useful with the humour that Leigh applied when explaining his interpretation of the Images throughout. It proved a very worthwhile evening and at the end of the night a lot of discussion was evoked among all members and everyone took home their own take and feelings about the Salon.