Blog 213

Two of my images from the Derby City Photographic competition on 12th March 2012. The combined scores gave me joint second place on the evening.

Open competition: Breakfast at 8 scored 19/20

Theme competition 'Song Title': Money, Money, Money scored 17/20

Blog 157

These are my competition images entered in the Derby City Photographic Competition on Monday 16th May 2011.

The first one, entered in the themed competition "Up Close" is a seed head from the plant known by its common name Jack go to bed/sleep at noon, because the flower head closes at noon, or Goatsbeard (Tragopogon pratensis).

It is a ten shot differentially focussed set of images, the sharpest parts blended in Photoshop to give this image. I used Topaz Creative Detail Accent to accentuate the detail and finally used Silver Efex Pro High Structure to convert it to a monochrome image. Scored 16/20.

The second image "So Tired" was taken at Elvington Yorkshire Air Museum at a re-enactment by Battlegroup North, I couldn't resist taking this photograph. Knowing what competition judges are like and mostly their lack of understanding about differential focus, a friend suggested that I sharpen the hands somewhat.

I am glad I did as this image was the winner in the open competition scoring 20/20. The combined scored made me the winner overall in that competition.

Blog 87

My two images from the competition held at Derby City Photographic Club on Monday 1st November 2010. Not my strong-point composition. The Autumn Leaf would probably, according to the judge Robert Falconer, have been the competition winner if I had presented it rotated ninety degrees anticlockwise!! Drat. Autumnal Leaf scored 18/20 and Holly Berries scored 17/20.

My friend saw the image when we were out walking and said how about that for the competition, whose theme was Colour. Due to the poor light, it was taken at 17:12 hours a bit further north of Derby, there was little light and it was raining, so I upped the ISO to 2000 and exposed the image 1/30sec @ f6.3. I used Topaz DeNoise the remove some of the sight noise present in the image. All processing prior to DeNoise was done in Adobe Camera Raw.

Autumnal Leaf

Holly Berries.

Blog 37

What a surprise, these two images with their combined score gave me first place in Derby City Photographic Club's open print competition on Monday 17th May 2010.

Steve Roper, an excellent judge, had something positive, supportive and constructive to say about all of the competition entries. The portrait of Leah on the left scored 19 points out of 20 and the portrait of Laura on the right scored 18 out of 20, giving a combined score of 37 points.

Why did the portrait of Laura score 18, the judge didn't like the pearl earing, he found it slightly distracting, so if I enter the image into other competitions perhaps I should call it "The Lady With The Pearl Earring" alluding to the portrait painted by Johannes Vermeer called "The Girl With The Pearl Earring" see here.

Blog 18

PRESENT A PANEL

Thus is a collage of the Derbyshire Snow Scenes that I entered in the Derby City Photographic Club competition on Monday 15th February 2010. The judge commented that he felt that there needed to be a little more detail in the snow areas of the images. He wasn't too pleased with the image top right, he felt it needed the horizon to be lower and then it might have fitted the panel layout better.

The original photographs were taken from Curbar Edge in the Derbyshire Peak district, on the morning of Wednesday 30th December 2009 at approximately 9:45am.

Having sat in the car waiting to see a sunrise for what seemed hours, a sunrise wasn't seen because of the blizzard conditions. The only thing that was evident was the whooshing noise of the ice particles hitting the drivers' side windows and it building up in interesting patterns on the glass.

Had to bite the bullet eventually and with hood up, gloves on and camera stuffed inside my Berghaus coat wandered on to the edge, the ice particles were blowing horizontally and stung any exposed skin.

So the photographs were taken in blizzard conditions, something the judge had no conception of, I hope you...

Blog 4

So this is the metal coffin that the patient arrived in. Not much life in there, a couple of winking LEDs, I wasn't persuaded by the winking. Much sooner be winked at by a charming young lady.

Prognosis: probably overheated due to the exhausting effort that the beast had been persuaded to do in creating many competition winning images. There was lots of dust build up in the processor heat sink.

After much M to M resuscitation and CPR on the beast, there is now respiration and life is coming back. The winking LEDs this time persuade me that the components now have a purpose in life again.

Shall I place a trip wire inside so that when the operator prepares images for competitions, they look alright on screen, however the operator can never really make them good enough to win again.

Think of it punters we might have a chance of winning a competition.