Our second competition of the season was judged by Robert Albright and featured “Open” and “People at work” subjects. At the outset the judge explained his approach to judging whereby technical aspects tended to be well handled due to the ongoing improvements in technology and the increased availability of tuition materials on the ninternet. Therefore less differentaition existed between images on a technical basis and accordingly the judge placed key emphasis on what the image communicated to the viewer.

A healthy input of prints was received with several members participating in this category for the first time which ws pleasing to see. The winning Open print was an abstract type landscape entitled ” Tintagels Portal” and an “Artist” at work won the People at work category.

As usual a strong selection of dpis were displayed and an environmental type image “Beauty Prevails” won the Open competition and “This will take a while” won the Prople at work” category

Members were invited to bring along some prints and also send in dpis that could be critiqued on the night. In preparation, some guidelines and headings had been circulated which were revisited at the start of the meeting to ensure a structured and consistent approach was taken.

For prints, we set up tables and shared out the images, which were critiqued in turn, and key comments noted on a critique sheet, The original plan had been to swop images between tables but the process took longer than expected so we were not able to compare critiques on the same image from each table. However, the critiques from each table were shared and discussed with the conclusion that it seemed easier to revert to the more technical aspects of an image as opposed to the emotional significance and feelings that it invoked.

Dpi critiques were provided collectively and the author also had the opportunity to share some insight into why and how the particular image had been taken and what they had set out to achieve.

The evening was quite a tiring one but infornative, with the importance of self- critiquing ones images and the difficulties that judges face in critiquing open subject competitions, being key take aways.

In order to help prepare members for a landscape competition later in the season, some training/tutorial materials were viewed. These included an online presentation on “Light in the Landsacpe” which was followed by information on various apps that can be effectively used in planning and preparing a landscape shoot and help maximise the likelihood of achieving the desired results. The evening concluded with a number of landscape images being viewed, including those from the Landscape Photographer of the Year 2023 competition.