3rd night of judging for our 2024 annuals with Andrew Rothery 01/05/24

On the night Andrew judged prints from both the experienced and the intermediate members of our club. Andrew worked his way through many excellent prints and gave us his unbiased and thoughtful opinion on each one. He conducted the evening with purpose and supplied feedback with suggestions on how the image may have been improved. A number of images from each of the sections shown on the evening were "held back" and we will now have to wait until late June at our "oscars" evening to celebrate all the winners and commended images.

The club would like to thank Andrew for his thoughtful and excellent comments throughout the evening.

Annual Competition Judge’s Feedback – Erica Oram CPAGB AFIAP BPE3 17/04/24

This was the first round of judge’s feedback on our entries for this year and the evening was conducted wholly through the Zoom application. We were pleased to have such an experienced judge commenting on all the digital images presented. Four categories were reviewed: Open Mono; Open Colour; Scapes; and Beginners which is an open section. In each case Erica gave her considered views about the merits of the work on display and where appropriate pointed out possible improvements which could be made. A small number of images in each section were chosen for special commendation but we will have to wait until the end of June before our ‘Oscars’ night reveals who has won the trophy and certificates in each category.

The club wishes to record its thanks to  Erica for the time and careful consideration given to each image as well as the helpful feedback.

Speaker – Polina Plotnikova FRPS EFIAP ‘Starting from a blank canvas’ 13/12/23

Our Programme Secretary, Sue, with assistance from Zoom served us up another treat this evening with a beautifully illustrated talk by Russian-born UK-based Polina Plotnikova. This very accomplished photographer showcased her various projects centred around ‘Flower Portraits’ and her take on Still Life. In each case Polina started by showing examples of painters who had influenced her work followed by a wide range of her own images and technical advice on studio set-ups. Included within this were examples from her FRPS panel of flowers which were past their best.

She explained how she started from her pre-visualisation of the finished image. Then, by carefully setting up the subject or subjects against a chosen background with a variety of lighting methods she was able to achieve the desired effect as nearly as possible in camera. A few of the more surrealistic ones involved props which were cloned out in Photoshop but post-processing was kept to a minimum. Polina is a Lensbaby ambassador and gave some good examples of how to create images with selective focal points.

Even if you had limited interest in the main subject matter this talk provided a wonderful evening’s entertainment and some good tips to help everyone’s photography.