This was the second round of the Print Trophy Competition at Farnborough Camera Club in the 2023-2024 season on the 8th December 2023. One image was required to be mono and the second was allowed to be an open image.
Watching
We were with Steve Hedges in Westminster waiting for sunset over the Palace of Westminster and this lady was watching her friends taking photos. After processing I originally cropped to a square but then decided on A4 for printing.
Summary of judge’s comments
… we are certainly watching the young lady here
… this is ann interesting image because it is neither one thing nor another ; it is not wide enough to show the entire girl’s hair and and a bit of context to her. The photographer has chosen to to get rid of the right hand side of her hair and I think often when you see an image with bits chopped off you feel that it is missing because the photographer was perhaps concentrating on where the eyes were rather than a little bit more of the image
… or of course there might be something there that you didn’t want in the shot []so there might be good reasons for cropping
… however, I feel that that cropping just feels a little bit awkward
… the other point that I would like to say with this one is that hands are incredibly difficult. If you are taking a portrait hands are really difficult to work out what to do with . On this image where I I am guessing that it hasn’t been posed it feels like yo have just taken a photograph as you saw it . I think that the hands feel slightly awkward , it ends up looking kind of a bit clutchy and short because she is I suppose just wiping something off her face , the hand looks inelegant against a very elegant young lady
… so for me this image struggles on a few fronts
… I want to like it, I love the hair for me I think I would of gone i really close and concentrated on that lovely colouration dark at the top and lighter further down, I think that there is a definitely a strong image in there somewhere but I feel that the cropping and the hand just doesn’t work to your advantage
… plus point I think that the background is quite interesting you can just see a little bit of detail in it but it is sufficiently thrown out of focus that it doesn’t detract from your subject
… so I am afraid that this one for me, I like elements of it but it doesn’t really work as a whole picture
Snowflake eyebrows
The model was Alicia who in Instagram is known as @my_little_goth_model.
Summary of judge’s comments
… so you have told me that snowflake eyelids are important to you as a photographer
… when I looked at this picture your comment reminded us that [a] portrait can do many things ; it can be flattering, it can be not so flattering , it can show you something of the person and it can show you what the person wants to show you of themselves; so I think in this one we are seeing perhaps what the subject wants to portray of themselves as much as the actual person themselves
… the jewellery, the makeup, the hair colour – everything is kind of shouting at you – this is how I want to be seen
… you are getting feel for the character of the person more than the person themself and that is a strength its own right because to be able to capture what this person wants to be seen as is not easy, I think that you have done that well
… again hands are difficult and that hand doesn’t feel comfortable to me but the whole portrait is not a particularly comfortable portrait
… is somebody who wants to stand out and look different to the rest of us And good luck to them
… overall. it is an interesting shot , I don’t like it but that doesn’t matter from a judging point of view , you can put whether you like it or not to one side but had the photographer captured it well
… and the photographer has captured it , I am not so sure about the hands , not so sure about the white tee shirt which kind of drags my eye down to that bottom right hand corner
… but the actual face and hands have been really well captured
The scores
There were 24 images in total in this round in the Advanced Division.
“Watching” scored 7.5 and “Snow flake eyelids” scored 9.
Mono round
Open Round
The original images
Watching
Snowflake eyelids
