This was the second round of the PDI Trophy Competition at Farnborough Camera Club. This was an open round and two images were permitted.
Hawk in the Welsh hills
In July 2019 we were in the Welsh Hills again waiting for RAF jets to fly through the Mach Loop. This image was from one of the passes and I managed to catch the jet just before it passed behind one of the many photographers on the Bwlch on that day.
Judge’s comments
I have relatives in Wales and I go there fairly regularly and I have been in areas where they do these low flying training runs and it is just sensational, what you cannot get an impression is of the noise that you getAbout simplicity, you could argue that there is more than one sheep there but I am taking sheep [as one], the plane and the photographer
And again there are 4 or 5 pictures tonight, that I think under normal circumstances this picture wouldn’t work to have the out of focus photographer in it but I think that it does work in this situation
Again did you consider do we need to see him all? I contemplated, you know, cutting the left hand side off down through the top of his head because we’d still get the message that he was a photographer with you taking the picture
The most exciting I ever had with one of these Hawks was that I was up on the top of Snowden coming up one of the paths and I could hear the plane coming and then suddenly it appeared out of nowhere , not only was it a 100 foot above my head but it was upside down and I could see both pilots so clearly in it
Great picture, but not quite good enough to be held back
Coffee in January
On the second day of my street photography workshop with Valerie Jardin we were walking back up the street after watching the dancing in the church square.
Judge’s comments
Well I thought, his is just brilliant for this to came after that previous one because this shows you how well he controlled the light because here we have got January really low directional bright sunlight and we have photographed the subject in that bright sunlightWhat the photographer has done well , which often they don’t do well, is expose for the highlights so in actual fact we have our shadow areas going very dramatically into dark which actually makes her pop out of the picture
Where I am less happy is that this is obviously a grab shot and what pops out are her blasted scarf and her trainers and her coffee cup
And really we aren’t really seeing her, well really it is all about a fashion but we need to see her fashion and her face in the picture
So although I like the way that you have treated it and its very good for illustrating what I felt about the other, I thought overall as a picture it was more a picture about the drinking water and coffee than it was about the subject
The scores
There were 42 images in this round in the Advanced Division.
‘Hawk in the Welsh Hills’ scored 8.5 and ‘Coffee in January’ scored 7.
The original images
‘Hawk in the Welsh Hills’:
The image was shot at ISO800 170mm f8.0 at 1/1000 sec.
After cropping the rocks, extra sheep and the distracting paths were all cloned out. The photographer’s hat had its branding removed as well.
‘Coffee in January’:
The image was shot at ISO100, 50mm f8.0 at 1/400 sec.
The cafe window and the bike wheels were all cloned and cobbles were added where the wheel had stood. The wall behind was tidied up too.