Second round of Print Trophy Competition 2020-21

This was the second round of the Print Trophy Competition at Farnborough Camera Club. This was a round two with one open image and one monochrome image.

I had decided not to enter the first round of this internal club competition because of lockdown restrictions. This and subsequent rounds were entered as I was able to post the unmounted prints to the competition secretary.

Despite the comments from the judge both prints were on Lustre paper from SimLabs.

Open Colour: “Words to describe lockdown”

In October 2020 Savill Garden had an exhibition of sculptures. This statue in particular caught my attention and I spent time watching other visitors capture images of it. This lady went very close and I wanted to have her arm as a lead in to the statue as well as my favourite mini-project of capturing images on other people’s phones.

Judge’s comments
This is on a gloss paper, and is quite a rich dynamic image, from all the colours that are in this image , big bold and shiny. Yes, so happy with the gloss paper,

I think it works well, composition is is good, technically it is fine not a problem depth of field got to give them credit as as we just have this lady on the right hand side in with her phone and we have the statue where we can read everything on on the statue, quite a nice exposure on the statue, quite nice lighting so that’s great

An interesting theme as such makes you think a bit about what this woman is up to taking a photograph. The photographer has got the image in there [on the phone] fully on the screen

So a couple of points just to possibly help it along, but bearing mind this is the advanced group and perhaps you don’t like too much advice, but compared to the statue she is is a little on the bright side, especially her hands, as we are drawn to them, so I would bring her hands down a little bit so that they are not so bright. I think that we have got the right amount of head and hair in and all the rest of it

The only other thing is her top, that purple which is bit of a glare, you could ask her to change top [!] …

I think it is a really well thought out challenging image

Mono: “Whitby Abbey steps”

I wanted to capture the iconic view of Whitby harbour and the Abbey Steps. This meant getting up before sunrise and cautiously leaving our rented house before everyone was awake. The streets of Whitby were deserted and once at the steps I tried many combinations of settings and positions to get an image that I was happy with.

Judge’s comments
OK, this is on gloss paper, and again probably a good choice for this sort of dark moody image, and again being on this medium of viewing it on a screen we have more shadow and detail here than we have on the print and I should be marking on the print

One of the things I was going to comment on is that there are some very dark areas where we can’t see much at all

Composition is interesting because we left this lamppost in with its very bright light very neasr to the camera and I know the title is to do with the steps but really title wise Whitby Abbey steps, the steps are only in the bottom bit it is really the bay or the harbour – so be a little bit careful with your title as it can be misleading and put some judges off because there is not many steps in it as we are looking down

I am not so sure about that light, once I noticed that light its drawing me and you don’t want that and it is very difficult to get rid of now in post production because it is so bright

The little light down the bottom is not a problem as that is only casting a little light and it is not so big in the image but I think I would have tried to move somehow to avoid this [big] light and somehow leave the steps in or the handrails to somehow give the impression because your eye wanders across the other side and keeps coming back to this light which is a shame

So it is a good attempt but I don’t think that it actually come off as well because of the distractions in it

The scores

There were 26 images in this round in the Advanced Division.

‘Words to describe lockdown’ scored 9 and ‘Whitby Abbey Steps’ scored 8.

The original images

‘Words to describe lockdown’:

ISO 640 75mm f/11 1/80 secs

‘Whitby Abbey steps’:

 

ISO 12,800 55mm f/4 1/40 sec