October 24th Open Competition

26/10/11

Competition1
Judged by David Southwell ARPS

When asked to present a write up for the Open competition and David Southwells visit, I thought I would start with the fact that after meeting David when he visited the club to present his critique evening I was already expecting that his judging of the Open competition could be very different to what we are all used to, but was certain that the evening would be an interesting one.

David and Patsy were wonderful guests and very gracious, David spent at least two hours during the afternoon judging the prints at our house with the cramped conditions of our lounge, and he continued to be most helpful and understanding when things did not exactly go to plan on the night, his sense of humour and photography experiences became very apparent.

His style of judging was very different, as I expected, but I think most people were very pleased with how he set the images up, showing them in the different genres and his explanations about each picture were very informative and demonstrated that he had spent a lot of time and effort on our behalf.

If I had any criticism it would be that he seemed to focus on the Photoshop editing of the images and I believe that some members may have found this frustrating.

Having spent a time in their company, it became very obvious that both David and Patsy are very keen photographers who both have a lot of knowledge, and they were both happy to share this with us.

Overall a very different competition evening, slightly unplanned, but very entertaining and even after all the problems at the beginning of the evening... we managed to finish exactly on time!

Sue Buckland

Judge's Comment;

I really enjoyed my evening at Dorchester and appreciated the genuine
hospitality and warm atmosphere. Dorchester is everything that a good club
should be.

The work was of a very high standard and included images of salon quality. I
derived real personal enjoyment from studying them all as part of the judging
process. The large variety of work demonstrated a broad and healthy range of
capabilities amongst members with differing genres competing on approximately
equal terms.

Talking generally there were two noticeable processing activities which, in my
opinion, demonstated a need for greater attention to detail to improve the
standard work for a significant minority of images.

1. Detailed attention to the need to dodge and burn those parts of a
photograph which appear to be either too dark or too bright. I did
particularly remark about the number of images with overbright areas at the
edge. This tended to reduce the efffectiveness of otherwise carefully balanced
compositions. Over-dark foregrounds were also a feature of a number of images.

2. From time to time it is inevitable that composition obtained in camera may
not be ideal and careful manipulation of the image, either digitally or in the
darkroom, is necessary if that photograph is to be satisfactorily composed.

In this context I drew attention to both digital and darkroom methods of
dealing with these problems. As far as dodging and burning is concerned I also
remarked that that process formed an intrinsic part of the darkroom
enlargement activity and was therefore perhaps not so easily forgotten!

The remarks about helping with the difficulties are much appreciated but all I
did was to make my equipment available when it was needed. I was glad to
help.

Thank you once more.

David Southwell ARPS
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