Our competition on Thursday was all about Connections and the Set Subject was embraced by entrants, accounting for 60% of entries.

Several new members entered successfully with images among the top scores – well done  Paul Hughes and Vicki Kramer!

Our judge, Robert Dettman, deliberated over every image, making a genuine effort to see the image from the photographer’s perspective and trying to understand the story they were attempting to convey.  He seemed to like our work, leaning toward high end scores, but also carefully explaining how he felt images could be improved, particularly in technical aspects and composition.

The type of connections ranged from strong emotional images involving people and/or animals to physical/mechanical connections such as chains, links, locks, machinery and Huw Rosser’s clever image Connection, Old and New which combined the physical, invisible and metaphorical and clearly took a lot of thought to create.

Sisters – Helen Whitford

The Falconer – Paul Hughes

Connection Old and New – Huw Rosser

In the Open category James cleaned up with a record average score of 9.58 across a full set of 12 entries! (Yes,  all 10’s or 9’s!)  His images demonstrate remarkable versatility and creativity.

Bee Eaters – James Allan

Red Car – James Allan

Reed Warbler – James Allan

Arum – James Allan

Death Adder – James Allan

Come back in a few days for an update on this post, with more great images and to check out all of our Top Prints and Top Projected Images.

The notion of Spot Colour was embraced by members, with more than half of entries falling in this category, excluding mono of course which was excluded from the Set Subject.  (That didn’t stop James from entering an all-red image and a suggestion of yellow in mono.)

There was a great variety of interpretations and applications of Spot Colour, ranging from a minor single element to quite a large amount of selected colour in some scenes.  It was clear that a lot of thought went into all of the images which were selected for this subject and the results were impressive.

Meredith used architectural detail to create interest, complemented by a bright but worn-looking sign.  Mark drew attention to the beautiful light falling through the window on apples with his touch of colour and Helen brought attention to a lion’s very effective grooming tool.

Rather Rustic – Meredith Retallack

Heligan Apples – Mark Pedlar

Grooming Tool – Helen Whitford

Suzie kept quite a bit of colour to draw attention to the river in an otherwise blue image of Paris, Di made us really look at the bumblebee and Kerry used pattern effectively to show  a rainbow bow tie in a pile of CDs.

Summer Night in Paris – Suzie Smith

Yellow Bumble Bee – Di Gage

CD Rainbow – Kerry Malec

Judge, Susie Lipert, made thoughtful comments, giving time to each image, and gave lots of useful suggestions although she may be more fond of a tight crop than many of our members.  Thank you Susie!

We had a very strong contingent of nature and animal images again and in the Open category it was great to see Kim Brumfield’s Luv U Mum and Gordon Lindqvist’s Open Wide and Just Resting among the top scorers.

Luv U Mum – Kim Brumfield

Open Wide – Gordon Lindqvist

Just Resting – Gordon Lindqvist

Want more?  Go to Top Prints.  The Top Projected Digital Images can be found here.

Our next competition is “Connections.”  Tune in again after October 24th.