PAGB Digital Imaging Competition
For the first time that most members of our club can remember, Exmouth Photo Group qualified for the PAGB Inter-Club competition – effectively a British Championship for camera clubs all over the country. The format of the competition is similar to the WCPF’s DPIC in which we came 3rd earlier this year, though it’s more complicated in that we have a bank of 40 images from which we select 8 for “round 1” and a further 8 for “round 2”. The top 8 clubs after round 2 show 20 images each in the final, with the remaining clubs showing a final 8 images in the “plate” competition.
Our initial 8 images had to be chosen from our bank of 40 prior to the event. During round 1 Sheila & I tried our best to gauge the way the judges were scoring to choose our next 8 images for round 2.
Given the level of competition from the top clubs in each region of the country, we didn’t do too badly, though we certainly never threatened for any of the top places! In all, 37 clubs took part, 2 from each of the 15 regions and 7, including the WCPF’s Dorchester, qualifying through their successes at last year’s Championship. In round 1 the scores varied from 101 to 74, with Exmouth scoring 84. In round 2 the scoring was generally higher, ranging from 107 to 75, with Exmouth scoring 88. Our overall total of 172 left us in equal 23rd place. In the plate we were again equal 23rd with a score of 89 points. The winning club in the final, Smethwick Photographic Society, edged out last year’s Champions, Wigan 10 Foto Club, by a single point.
The judges all generally gave higher scores to wildlife and action images in rounds 1 and 2, and I couldn’t help but wish we’d included more of my gannets in our pool. We saw several gannet images that I considered fairly ordinary placed very highly! Manipulated, mono, portraits, and “street” or “social comment” images generally did not fare so well on this occasion, which was a pity as we had tended to slightly favour those styles of image when we selected our 40 a couple of months ago. Several of the titles given to the images we saw caused considerable entertainment to the audience and added much to the enjoyment of the day. Maybe we should have brought in Frank Phillips to suggest some titles for us!
In the plate we were allowed up to 4 images from rounds 1 & 2, the rest being images we’d not previously used. With hindsight, we could have “held back” some from round 2 to go for a higher placing in the plate. However, there wasn’t much time for “tactical” thinking between rounds 1 and 2, and we simply put in what we felt would do best for us at that time.
Of the images we used, John Wickett’s “Empty Places” stood out as our most successful, so congratulations to John for his continued success with that one.
All in all it was an enjoyable day, though long and pretty hard work for us. Seeing how we fared at national level was interesting, and certainly not discouraging. We saw some beautiful images, not all of which scored particularly highly. Although we finished just 23rd, I think we can feel reasonably proud of ourselves. Dave
If you would like to view the scores and who contributed please click here and a PDF document will open.
A La Ronde Exhibition
Today a "hoard" of members turned up at A La Ronde, and what a delight to see so many; to hang their prints in our Exhibition which is being held at A La Ronde. Joking aside, it was good to see such a turnout, we had two teams, one in the Stable Block and one in the Tea Rooms and eventually with a lot of wire and string cutting and several adjustments it was ready for the public to view. The Exhibition is from Friday 16th July until Thursday 29th July. Opening times are 11 am to 5 pm each day except Thursday, in The Stables and Tearooms. Some of the prints are available for sale and we have in the past sold images much to the delight of the members concerned.
There are 42 images on display and I must say with the small amount of space we are allocated they look excellent with a good variety of different skills involved. Please try and visit this exhibition which was organised by Tony Ovens. These sort of events always take a great deal of effort to manage and I would like to think it is appreciated, after all its your work and I am sure, like me, you like to see your images displayed. If you haven't got any work on display perhaps next year you to would like to contribute.
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Some of the helpers |
Part of the Exhibition in Tea Rooms |
Part of the Exhibition in Stable Block |
Window Display at Thomas Tuckers
Last Tuesday 25th May is was "All Hands to the Deck" again, well four of us!!!! We now occupy two of the Thoma Tucker windows opposite The Town Hall, we have arranged the panel we used in the Devon Club's Battle recently, called It's A Wrap, in the Arched Window with three of Mo's prints. In the other window we have put together a collection of framed prints.
Four of us managed to get to the shop and set the display up and it is thanks to Bob for his valuable help in fixing the hangers; Gill, Mo and myself hunted the store for chairs and material to decorate the windows. We have only used prints that were to hand that day, but it was short notice. We were given this time slot to put up the prints but we would like to have more representation of club members work on display. At present we have a couple of Bob's, a couple Dave's, three of Mo's, a few of Gill's, two of Ann's plus my five.
Now the dust has settled, if any of you would like to put your work in the window please let Dave know. We should be able to do some changes at a later date, in fact changes from time to time would be a good thing.
Unfortunately with all the work going on in the town at present it's difficult to view the windows properly. The paving outside our windows is not finished and the barriers are in place but we did notice quite a few people viewing, some ventured over the barriers but the display does look good from further away. Unfortunately the public cannot read, unless they get closer, who has put on the display. Please take the time to have a look, it is in a good place and hopefully in a couple of weeks the area outside out window will be easy to view.
Devon Clubs Print and Digitally Projected Battle 8th May 2010
This popular battle was held at the Courtenay Centre, Kingsteignton Road, Newton Abbot, TQ122QA on Saturday 8th May 2010. Newton Abbot hosted the event and it ran very smoothly so congratulations to Newton Abbot.
John Perriam and I went to Newton Abbot early to set up our panel with the help of Ann Stredwick, the hall was busy with other club members setting up their panels, hammers were going, measuring, big discussions, all very hectic. The judge arrived for 1 pm to view the panels and a few of us popped to the pub for lunch. All very civilised.
I must also congratulate Newton Abbot again, as they were the winners of the Digital set with Kingsbridge 2nd and Proteus 3rd. We were given a Highly Commended for our set of digital images which I have put below.
Congratulations must go to Kingsbridge again as they were the winners for the Print Panel titled Gannets at Bass Rock, an excellent panel. Newton Abbot were placed 3rd. We however came second with our Print Panel called It's a Wrap and again I have put our panel below as it was displayed. Congratulations must also go to John Wickett, he was a 3rd place winner for the individual prints. It was John who inspired John and I to produce further images of the same kind which, after a bit of thought, gave us an excellent panel. Quite a bit of work went into producing, printing and mounting the images so I am very pleased that we were placed second. There were some excellent panels produced by other clubs with a lot of hard work and creative ideas going into them.
14 clubs took part in the Battle and it was well supported. Tea and cakes were provided in the afternoon which went down well. Fotospeed and Focal Point had stalls and I am sure they got a good amount of sales, I certainly bought some paper, its always cheaper at shows. There was also a stall selling photographic books plus the usual raffle.
The judge, Barry Mead FRPS, EFIAP, MPAGB was excellent, he made a good job of judging the panels and sets of digital images and made the audience laugh on many occasions. Very witty and didn't take overlong on making his comments.
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Print Panel Placed 2nd OverallTop Left: Village Green by Sheila HaycoxTop Right: The Quay by John PerriamMiddle: Cathedral Close by John Wickett (Placed 3rd for Individual Prints)Bottom Left: Sculpture Garden by Sheila HaycoxBottom Right: Millennium Centre by John Perriam |
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Digital Set of Images(Highly Commended) |
AGM Friday 23rd April
The AGM went without any hitches, there were quite a few proposals to get through but everything went well. New members were elected on to the Committee and Reports given. Mo thanked the Committee for all their hard work over the past year.
Awards were then given for the Monthly and Panels Competitions. Martyn then awarded the Chairman's Shield. He said it was difficult to know who to give it to, Sheila and Dave having done a lot for the club, however in the end he decided to award the Chairman's Shield to John Wickett for his progress in photography and for the fact that he took over the Treasurers post at short notice.
Dave McHutchison and Martyn
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Martyn and Jean King
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Trevor Cullen and Martyn
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John Wickett and Martyn
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John Perriam and Martyn, John was the winner of the John Stredwick Memorial Trophy for the Set Subject Competition
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Digital Economy Bill
A short while ago I wrote to Ben Bradshaw, the Exeter MP, on behalf of our Club pointing out concerns on copyright of images and the Digital Economy Bill. I have put below a couple of paragraphs of the letter I sent.
"There are no technical means to ineradicably bind a rights holder’s contact details to a digital photo file. Although photographers can and do embed their information as metadata within image files, it is easily erased or overwritten by accident or design. Many software products remove these details, and many client users of photographs store photographs within systems that lose them. Simple operations such as saving a file from a browser or uploading to a webserver may orphan the work."
"Some assessments conclude that 90% of all photographs on the internet are orphans. Most are created by amateurs for whom there has been no necessity to protect their work from commercial use that was prohibited by copyright law, but which the Digital Economy Bill will now facilitate. Of those created by professionals, most have been orphaned by careless handling by commercial publishers, the very group who will now be at liberty to use those orphans for profit via the DEB licensing scheme."
For instance, someone could use an image and "fail" to locate the copyright holder via an “adequate search”; in effect some images can be known as "orphans".
My letter to Ben Bradshaw is here and I have received a reply from Bed Bradshaw, which is linked here. You can if you wish see a Summary of this Bill here.
WCPF DPIC Sunday 14th February
I am absolutely delighted with the day, we came third, yes third out of 47 clubs, quite an achievement. Dorchester was first with 280 points, Bristol was second with 272 points and we were only pipped by one point in getting the second place with 271 points. As Dorchester has come first so often they are automatically entered in the PAGB Digital Compeition at Warwick. We, coming third are thereford able to represent the WCPF together with Bristol at the Warwick PAGB Digital Competition. We will be up against clubs from all over Britain so quite a challenge.
Dave did well, he had a Highly Commended with his Puffin Landing and gained a Certificate which will be presented to him at the WCPF Council Meeting. He got two 13's which, for this particular day was excellent as the marking was quite low in general. We had images from the following members, John Wickett, Trevor Cullen, Peter Anderson, Brian Ward, John Perriam, Dave McHutchison, Norma Davey, Russ Freeman, Sharon McDiarmid and myself. Well done to all of you, its good to have so many representing the club.
No doubt more information will be published on the WCPF website plus all the scores for clubs who entered. I managed to make a note of a few other places; Taunton was 4th, Paignton and Kingsbridge wwere joint 5th and Newton Abbot was 7th.
The day went very well with hardly a hitch. It was held for the first time at the Corn Exchange which I think was much better especially as we had tiered seating. There was also a separate area for coffees and of course it was easy to pop out at lunch time to get a snack. The WCPF representatives put a lot of effort into this particular day arranging the judges, recording and projector equipment plus all the other work that goes on to make the day for all club members in the West Country. It was the largest entry ever with 47 clubs from all over the area taking part. Think about going next year, it's well worth it, a good day out, plenty of images to admire and perhaps get inspired.
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Images for Website
Some of you may like to have your image changed in the Members Images, please let me know and send an image 500 pixels wide. There are also a few missing images from members, if you can't see one of yours please let me have an image and I will upload. At present I have added a few images at the end of the S - Z members images as it takes ages to put them all in alphabetical order.
Miscellaneous
I have put some more information into the Members Area which is for "Members Eyes Only".
There is an inventory of all our equipment, I have done this because its scattered far and wide because it cannot all be stored at our new venue. Hopefully we can then keep a check of where everything is if its needed in the future. If for instance you need to borrow the Mat Cutter then you will see that John has it at his place. Our new laptop is for members use, for instance if they wish to do a project then they can transfer it to the laptop. This laptop will be used for any digital competitions.
There is a list of all our Library books. I have tried to put them into three groups; a small amount seem to apply to film and darkroom, a large amount seem to have just images which are certainly worth looking at, they will give you ideas and there is quite a number of books that could be useful to new members as they are instructive. I have them stored in one of the EPG cupboards. If you would like to borrow any please let me know and I will bring it to the club at the next meeting I attend.
The Membership List and Email List has been updated.
Exmouth Photo Group Flickrs
Come along members, join the group. Its a way to show some of your images - what else are you going to do with them!!!! At present there is a Discussion/Challenge going on - John said we should upload Body Parts, he chose this subject as its one of the Set Subjects. There have been some interesting pictures uploaded. Not every member of the Exmouth Photo Group Flickrs are Photo Group members. We have acquired others from others parts of the globe.
A new challenge has been issued by John called "Match This". Have a look at the site - http://www.flickr.com/groups/epg_flickrs/discuss/72157605485609537/