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29th Annual Exhibition wrap up – 2012

The BPC Annual Exhibition has been run, judged, awarded and examined!

Yep – all over. Thanks to everyone for their entries and efforts.

Judging night saw the well oiled BPC machine (with some minor hiccups) displaying a great range of images – album, colour & mono prints, along with the projected images, which this year did not include any slides. Thanks must go to Mark Pedlar for collating the prints in order ready for display, and Ray & Julie Goulter for their picture hanging skills 😆

Our judges, Lydia Strutton (Port Adelaide Camera Club and SAPF Secretary), Suzanne Opitz (Adelaide Camera Club) & Lindsay Poland (Photographic Wholesalers) worked their way through:

  • 18 Album prints
  • 39 Colour prints
  • 19 Monochrome prints
  • 35 Projected images

Of course being a panel judging, there was no feedback, and the scorers (Ashley & myself) diligently recorded the numbers whilst the audience sat admiring the work of their fellow club members.

Next years Annual Exhibition judging will be not be a club meeting to help reduce the no-doze consumption 😆

Two weeks later, after a bit more work, we were ready for the exhibition. Awards were engraved, certificates and the Annual Exhibition booklet printed, copies of everyones scores prepared, and Ray’s camera was fired up ready for recording the great event.

Many club members toiled to put up the images – with labels, so we could see who did what and have a chat about how images were captured and admire the creativity of our fellow photographers. On top of that a range of food was laid out for all to share whilst we surveyed the images – courtesy of our members! As one member pointed out, it was good just to have a relaxed evening talking about the images with each other. We were also honoured to have Lydia return to view our awards night and share in the fun.

So on to the results!

The winners of the awards & certificates……

Album Prints

Annual Aggregate

  • JV Spick award  – Helen Whitford
  • 2nd – James Allan
  • 3rd – Heather Connoly

Annual Exhibition

  • Edge Malpas award – Jo Tabe : Beachport Jetty
  • 2nd – James Allan : Fern frond unfurls
  • 3rd – Adrian Hill : Kanyaka Ruins

Colour Prints

Annual Aggregate

  • Blackwood Photographic Club award – Helen Whitford
  • 2nd – John Vidgeon
  • 3rd – James Allan

Annual Exhibition

  • Mal Klopp award – John Vidgeon : It wasn’t me
  • 2nd – Joe Tabe : Days end
  • 3rd – James Allan : Common Brown Butterfly

Monochrome Prints

Annual Aggregate

  • Blackwood Times award – James Allan
  • 2nd – Heather Connolly
  • 3rd – Jo Tabe

Annual Exhibition

  • I’ve Been Framed award – James Allan : Lone Surfer
  • 2nd – Jo Tabe : Lenswood Ruin
  • 3rd – Jo Tabe : Something in the air
  • Merit – Helen Whitford : Two of a kind

Projected Images

Annual Aggregate

  • Photographic Wholesalers award – John Vidgeon
  • 2nd – James Allan
  • 3rd – Helen Whitford

Annual Exhibition

  • Hutt St Photos award – John Vidgeon : Cat and Mouse
  • 2nd – John Vidgeon : Balloons in grain
  • 3rd – Jo Tabe : Wanna
  • WEA APC Landscape Trophy – Jo Tabe : Wanna

I can see a pattern here – certain names just keep appearing! But seriously, all of you exhibited some great images, and although there are official judged winners, its not about the competition but about sharing and having a bit of fun.

So there you go – another Annual Exhibition over, another year over. All of the images from the digital section are in the Top Digital Images page – pop over and have a look.

Sincere thanks must go to Mark Pedlar for collating and organising the Annual Exhibition material (including certificates, the book, the score sheet etc etc etc), Helen Whitford for collecting/collating all the scores over the year, Yvonne Sears for organising the trophy engraving, doing those club secretary things etc, Ashley Hoff for running around and chasing things up, the scorers, image hangers, chair stackers etc, and all of you for participating, sharing your images and making the club function. If I’ve left a name or two out its just the lateness of the hour and I apologise in advance (check the post time – its after 1am!)

Have a great holiday break, relax with family and friends, keep those shutters firing, collecting images and enjoying your art. And don’t forget that next year we’ll be having those critique sessions – so collect the images you want to talk about.

Cheers

Chris 😉

Posted by  |  10/12/2012 | Categories: Blackwood Photography Club News, Competitions | Comments Off on 29th Annual Exhibition wrap up – 2012

The 2013 BPC Calendar is available!

2013 BPC Calendar
The low resolution sample above contains a watermark which will not appear on the calendar you purchase		 Its here!
Our calendar Gurus – James Allen & Eric Budworth – have been beavering away at producing our ever popular Blackwood Photographic Club calendar. The 2013 calendar is again filled with mostly local, Australian, colourful, and stunning images from our talented members. The price remains the same – a snap at just $15. Give it pride of place on your wall, hang it in the office as a talking point with colleagues, give it as a memorable Christmas gift, let it travel to far flung climes overseas or interstate.Whatever you choose, its ready for you to obtain a copy from any club member, email us , or write to the club via snailmail (yes, we do have a postal address). We accept cash, cheques & money orders (payable to Blackwood Photographic Club of SA) and Electronic Funds Transfer (details available upon request) as payment for this great calendar. Please add $2.90 for tough bag postage/packaging mail delivery.

Get your copy now and enjoy our vision of Australia

Posted by  |  19/11/2012 | Categories: Blackwood Photography Club News | Comments Off on The 2013 BPC Calendar is available!

Next year……interesting times ahead!

In case you’ve missed out on the news most of the 2012 committee is back! But with some new ideas!

Our sincere thanks to Jenny Pedlar for her work as Treasurer over the last few years – but as we knew, Jenny wanted to pass on that role, and so we welcome Carolyn Beckett as Treasurer. We also have Helen Whitford joining as a general committee member to boost our numbers and give a fresh perspective.

We also have a some new positions – an Outings Secretary which James Allan has consented to fill. James will endeavour to have an outing a month for club members to both provide a social focus and get more images in our catalogues.  Mark Pedlar has agreed to co-ordinate the judges, and Julie Goulter is reprising her role as Social Secretary! In fact Julie has already earned our sincere thanks for organising the brilliant October Long Weekend outing at Robe. I’ve posted her report, but am still waiting on more images (although there are quite a few on Flickr)

On to the new exciting stuff.

At this years AGM, we had a discussion about the direction the club was heading in. I have had comments from members about judging, workshops and getting more out of the club. In my opinion we were in a rut, with the regular cycle of workshops/talks (which are generally very good – who can forget Stavros Pippos!) and competitions (which can range from good to downright awful depending on the judge and their comments). In fact, after one competition I had several members leave in total exasperation and frustration that they had learned nothing new and sat there listenning to one persons “egotistical rant”. That was followed up by several phone calls expressing their concerns.

We have all felt frustrated with judges in the past – including me. But it then begs the questions What is a photography club? Is it

  • a social gathering of like minded people?
  • a place to have some fun?
  • there to help people improve their photographic skills?
  • there to provide constructive critique of photographs?
  • meant to be a discussion forum?
  • there to help us push the boundaries of our photography?
  • a place to learn about new directions in photography?
  • there to provide a competition venue?

The answer is Yes to most of these questions, but one question should not dominate the others. Unfortunately, the last question – is it a competition venue? seems to have started to dominate our club. Thats not why I joined, and from what I’ve heard from many others its not the reason they joined either.

So how can we bring it back to the core values of enjoying and learning new photographic skills with a bunch of like minded people? To start with, how about having more outings and doing things together? Well, the Outings secretary and the Social secretary can address that. So theres a tick in that box.

What about learning new things? The workshops (both member and external visitor supported) address aspects that cover that. So another tick (although we need to know what you want too! Please tell us!).

Then the question of discussion and constructive critique arises. Now we have a problem. We can listen to judges comments at competition nights, but its not a discussion – its a lecture! Some are better at this and some are worse – more of the latter rather than the former in my experience. After a lot of thought and discussion with the committee, we thought it important that we give our members the opportunity to talk about their images and get constructive feedback. That gives us context. More importantly, it reintroduces dialogue – not just throw the image up, get it judged, put it away and say goodnight.

As a result, at the AGM, we put up a new proposal (I’ve put that in a PDF you can download and read) – to switch meetings to a rotation of 1. Workshop/Talk, 2. Competition and 3. Critique night. After some discussion, the proposal was passed almost unanimously! Now we have a chance to worry about competition less, and instead think about photography and push the boundaries of our skills. There will still be competitions (7 instead of 10), but there is now a real opportunity to have dialogue and share our thoughts. So now we have tick for that box as well.

So starting next year, there is a new programme (coming soon in the RSS feed) that encourages club members to share their images and talk about them. Don’t be shy – bring in your images, have a talk about it, listen to what others have to say about them.

This change will also introduce our new projector screen – which now has a 4:3 aspect ratio (ie bigger images) and is more reflective. We were fortunate to secure a partial grant from the SAPF (after some discussion) to help us replace our 30 year old projector screen. This week, Ashley & I collected the screen, and Matt & I spent Friday night planning how to mount it on the wall safely (the widow maker won’t do!) and store it. It will involve a bit of engineering, but we have a plan and should have it up for the start of next year! Thanks to the SAPF and the committee for helping to get this important piece of equipment replaced.

Speaking of the SAPF, I must mention the new direction they are taking thanks to SAPF President Alberto Guirelli and the new committee. Alberto spoke to us after John Hodgson’s AV presentation earlier this year. He came not only to speak, but to listen to what clubs want from SAPF. As he pointed out, SAPF is there to represent us and bring us together as a community. As you all know, Alberto is a fan of our little club and its attitude (a favourite of his is our little blog entry about judging for example). To bring about this change, he is actively seeking opinions from clubs, trying to get greater involvment from the clubs with the community, change the judging process (he has joined the pool of judges), and is trying to engender a change in attitude to bring modern ideas of photography into the process of judging and photography.  That includes discussions with the AIPP about judging and a national standard, increasing the range of images we and the judges see and more focus on the art (and impact) rather than the technical aspects of photography. We can help by joining with SAPF in pushing the boundaries of judging, and criticising them if they don’t meet the standards we want – so we need to ensure we submit judges critiques to Keith Siedel and the SAPF judging team. Alberto reminded us of the mantra that many of you have heard from me – shoot for yourself! Please support Alberto and his cause – I feel that he is bringing back relevance to the SAPF and that has to be a good thing for all of us.

The final thing I’d like to mention is the new Australiana Landscape Trophy in the Annual Exhibition which is being sponsored by Ursula and Theo Prucha. Many thanks to the Prucha’s for sponsoring this award and giving us something new to try and achieve. I’ve put the description of the trophy and its rules into the Awards page and the Annual Exhibition entry form.

Another of the changes we have planned for the Annual Exhibition next year is that we are going back to tradition and not going to have you all sit through 2 hours of silence whilst the judges look at images! We’ll have the judging outside of club hours with just the committee and then have the Annual Exhibition with everyone seeing the images for the first time and awards handed out so we can have a decent discussion about the assembled images!

Enough of El Presidente’s thoughts – see you all soon at the Annual Exhibition judging (bring the NoDoze :D)

Chris 😉

Posted by  |  28/10/2012 | Categories: Blackwood Photography Club News, Opinion | Comments Off on Next year……interesting times ahead!

October Long Weekend 2012 – Robe

ROBE SA – Friday 28 September to Monday 1 October 2012

Who attended:

  • Julie Goulter (The Organiser)
  • Ray Goulter
  • Jenny Pedlar
  • Mark Pedlar
  • Helen Whitford
  • Russell Whitford
  • Eric Budworth (El Professore)
  • Rhonda Budworth
  • James Allan (Captain Click)
  • Frances Allan (Madame LaFarge)
  • Chris Schultz (El Presidente)
  • Yvonne Sears (The Quiet Achiever)
  • Jo Tabe (Bird Woman)

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Where we stayed

A rental property in the heart of Robe.  The house was very comfortable and provided all the amenities we required.

Where we went and what we saw

Saturday

Small groups headed in various directions on Saturday morning to see what was interesting around the town of Robe.  Beacons Hill Lookout, the Boat Harbour and the Main Street to name a few spots. Along with photographs being taken a few tried out the local coffee shops.  What a relaxing way to start the weekend.

Everyone returned to the house for a casual lunch – those who were hungry ate, those who weren’t watched.

In the afternoon many ventured to the Boat Harbour but it was quite windy so it was decided to move on to the Obelisk and surrounds.  Although the wind was chilly it made for some wonderful photo opportunities of the coastline and the waves crashing on the rocks.  Chris Schultz wandered off the track and headed to the cliff edge to see what other images he could come up with.

Ray and Julie took a few minutes to visit the Royal Circus and Customs House, now a small but very interesting Maritime Museum.  The caretaker told us that the town fought to stop the historic old building being knocked down.  Thank goodness another piece of our history was saved by local intervention.

On our way back to the house they also visited Mahalia Coffee where the master roaster  of a vast range of coffee beans prepares and sells his beans and ground coffee. Coffee and other local produce was purchased.

Saturday night a selection of salads, both hot and cold, were provided by various members and the steaks, chops, sausages and chicken were grilled to perfection on the bbq.  Dessert for those that felt inclined was blackberry self-saucing pudding and yoghurt (oops, forgot the ice-cream).

This was followed by an evening that was relaxing to the body but tested the brains of all the guests.  A game of lateral thinking, quirky questions for you to ponder and mysteries to solve.

Sunday

Beachport today, about a thirty minute drive from Robe.

The first stop for some was the Woakwine Cutting, an area that was once just swamp and had been cleared and drained to create beautiful, lush grazing area for some of the best Hereford cattle in the district.  A shower or two of rain fell but not enough to stop us looking around.

Upon arriving at Beachport we noticed a large group of people gathered adjacent to the jetty.  This evoked much discussion about whether they were there to scatter someone’s ashes off the jetty. As we watched with interest from the Jetty Café across the street, we were told it was not a wake, but the Blessing of the Fleet to open the fishing season.

Following morning tea at the Jetty Café we again broke in to small groups and wandered around the wharf and township to see what caught our interest.  We all met back at the bakery for lunch and a chance to compare stories of what we had seen and done.

Mid afternoon several of us headed out to do the Bowman Scenic Drive after a slight hiccup which took us out of town.  Once on the right track we discovered more areas of rugged coastline and some interesting rock formations caused by tidal movements and erosion over many, many years.

Late afternoon on the way back to Robe a few detoured into Little Dip National Park, in particular to the Little Dip Surf Beach.  Once again the rock formations and choppy seas provided some interesting subjects.

Another BBQ that night and a relaxing chat around the table.  A few of the members decided to take advantage of the full moon and headed down to the harbour for some night photography.

Monday

Our last day saw us all up bright and early for breakfast and packing up.  We were out of the house around nine so stopped off at a café in Robe for a cuppa and to decide our movements for the trip home.

Some wanted to see more of the national parks on their way to Kingston.  For the rest of us the first stop was Wangolina Station Winery.  It was a bit early for wine tasting but the owner was happy for us to wander around all the old sheds and outbuildings.  Jenny spotted a huge flock of black cockatoos in the distance and a couple of kangaroos.  We were then told that a short time before we arrived there had been about 60 kangaroos in the nearby paddocks.

From there we moved on to Cape Jaffa, where the lighthouse once stood.  The first thing we noticed was the very strong smell of fish.  Understandable when it is a popular fishing spot with the locals.  A quaint old jetty and more of the rugged coastline provided some interesting photography subjects.

Our last port of call was Kingston where we visited the the Cape Jaffa Lighthouse in its new home opposite the foreshore.  A quick drive across town brought us to the Big Lobster, a well-known tourist attraction.  It was there that we met up with the other members and all sat down to lunch.  Eric and Rhonda Budworth had already headed for home to beat any holiday weekend traffic into Adelaide but the rest of us congregated around the ‘Lobster’ for one last photograph before we all wended our way back along the Coorong and home.

The accommodation was good, apart from a few little issues and the weather was overcast but kind to us from a photography perspective.  A sincere thank you to all who participated and for the spouses who also joined in the experience.  Thanks also for the various contributions of food and drinks.  We hope everyone had a great time and we look forward to our next trip, wherever that may be.

Two questions to ponder from the weekend away….

Does size matter?

Is height important?

To find out the answer to these and many other questions join us for our next exciting adventure!

Julie Goulter

BPC Social Secretary

Posted by  |  28/10/2012 | Categories: Blackwood Photography Club News | Comments Off on October Long Weekend 2012 – Robe

Catching up on a few competitions……..

My apologies to those that have been hanging out for a few words about competitions over the last few months – we’ve been a tad busy with other things (another post will describe that)!

However, all is not lost – the images have been posted for your viewing pleasure.

I’ve been away for some of the competitions, so I won’t comment about those, but I will pass comment on the the most recent competition I managed to get to – Low Light photography. The night was judged by Keith Siedel (of Edwardstown club & now the SAPF judge co-ordinator). We had a broad range of images for the evening – some that were fairly routine, and some that pushed the boundaries of low light imaging – including one very clever slide by Arthur Farmer entitled 5 minutes at f8 – the title says it all!

Keith’s judging was very constructive – and despite the number of images each images pros and cons were given! Some of the points to come out of the judging were partly personal preference, but also some basics that always work:

  • People add interest to an image – even in low light
  • Silhouettes are always an option
  • Tight cropping is not always the answer
  • Monochrome with incandescent light is a good alternative to colour
  • Red colours in a print always work
  • Try to capture the shape and form of landscapes – not just the broad sweep

Afterwards we had a good discussion about some of the images – including correcting some of the judges mis-understandings (like the car airconditioning button being on during a cold night in one image).

I’ll leave Ashley or someone else to post comment about the other competitions.

Chris 😉

Posted by  |  27/10/2012 | Categories: Blackwood Photography Club News | Comments Off on Catching up on a few competitions……..