“Lines” Competition August 1st 2013

We drew the line, followed the line, toed the line and tried not to cross the line as our efforts this month went before judge, Matt Makinson of Black & White Photographics.

Matt has worked as a professional photographer but has concentrated on the printing side of the business in recent years.  As a printer in commercial photography he brought a different perspective to judging, closely scrutinizing the quality of the print and picking up flaws such as colour casts, pixellation etc.

He also strongly encouraged us to make use of vignetting (but to keep it subtle) so that the eye is not drawn away to light corners of a photograph.  Like most judges he also pointed out distractions which could be removed to improve a picture, such as bright patches, marks from a dirty filter or objects cut off by the frame.

His commercial eye favoured an arty style and he suggested possible markets for a number of images such as Council brochures and magazines, as well as hanging on someone’s wall.  Heather did particularly well with some quite abstract images.  His dislike of flies and cacti may have cost Kerry a couple of points (bad luck, not bad photography Kerry!) but overall his remarks were encouraging and positive.

I think we all enjoyed his little anecdotes along the way, as well as his show and tell with a magnificent print of Uluru, which helped make it a pleasant evening.

To see the Top Scoring Images visit our Top Scoring Prints and Top Scoring Digital Images pages and scroll down to August.

Cheers

Helen : )