First round PDI Trophy 2020-21 Competition

This was the first round of the PDI Trophy Competition at Farnborough Camera Club. This was an open round and two images were permitted.

Scooter sur le pont

On the first day of street photography in Paris we were on the Pont Saint-Louis and I was in the right place as this lady came past on her electric scooter.

Judge’s comments
Presumably somewhere in France, good panning, the girl on the scooter is pin sharp, whereas the pave road surface and the railings are nicely blurred

And I like again that this is back lit so you get this halo of light around her and I think the use of monochrome is great because a lot of this about shapes and shadows and they always look better in monochrome

It also works because the stuff in the foreground and up to the bridge parapet is really quite dark and intense monochrome and then behind that it sort of fades away in recession and is all pale grey and out of focus, but not so out of focus that you cant see that it is buildings and I think a road way down at the bottom

And also I think that it exudes that sort of historic 1950s ‘Cartier Bresson’ type definitive moment and imagery of people going about their business of street photography. I know a lot of his were set up and this might have been set up but they don’t give that impression but gives the impression of being spontaneous and getting just exactly the right moment

This is a classic image – hold that one back

At the end of the judging pass the judge reviewed the held back images and made these comments.

Extract from the judge’s summary
The remainder are all 10s

If I had to pick my best image, I couldn’t actually do it, but it would be a toss up between that of the absolutely classic shot of the lady on her electric scooter and the one of the owl, which is just stunning.

Vintage pose

This image was appreciated on my Instagram account and was from my earlier Art Figure workshop.

Judge’s comments
I am not usually a great person for nudes, I quite like the ones when you can just see the shapes and curves of the bodies and bits of bodies but I quite like this one.

The treatment that the author has put into it suits the leather chair very well, the lens fall off vignette actually gives that sort of antique look which suits the image. The monochrome suits for the same reasons.

The model looks slightly apprehensive, she doesn’t look totally at ease with the photographer which is a bit of a shame

But it is a well executed portrait.

The scores

There were 44 images in this round in the Advanced Division.

‘Scooter sur le pont’ scored 10 and ‘Vintage pose’ scored 8.

The original images

‘Scooter sur le pont’:

Converted to monochrome, the sky was blown out so I reduced the amount in the final image and used Lightroom to darken the top third of the image.

The image was shot at ISO125, 50mm, f8.0 and 1/125sec.

‘Vintage pose’:

 

I had asked the model for a serious face – a mistake given the comments from the judge! Converted again to monochrome;then adjustments to whites, highlights and blacks and finally a vignette.

The image was shot at ISO100, 35mm, f6.3and 1/100 sec