The Club enjoyed a multi-dimensional presentation entitled “Yet More Images” from Bob Bishop. The first half comprised a wide range of images spanning landscapes, wildlife, portraits and street photography. It concluded with a poignant audio-visual presentation entitled “Lest we forget” that captured the emotions of the repatriations through RWB for returning service personnel.

In the second half. Bob gave an informative presentation on his real photographic love – Event Photography – and illustrated various approaches and techniques to secure image material that could be subsequently processed to create powerful and engaging final images. His easy to follow explanations on backdrop selection, poses and the use of cut-outs should give confidence to anyone who wishes to become more active and improve their photographic outcomes at events

The Club were recipients of the collection of prints that were entered by clubs across the Western Counties and which tour the region after having been judged. In total 92 prints were viewed, which were spread across three categories: Nature; Open Colour and Open Monochrome with the gold, silver and bronze medal winners identified.

As expected, there was an interesting and varied selection of prints with several being truly outstanding. Some of the awards were questionable as were some of the non-awards for what were considered as winning submissions, emphasising that we all see and appreciate different aspects of images and experience different emotions.

An apparent and growing trend in monochrome prints was the adoption of “washed-out” images with a limited tonal range. Another trend that also seemed to be growing in popularity for colour prints was post-processing treatment of images to confer water colour painting effects. Both processes tended to polarise views accordingly.

An Extraordinary General Meeting (EGM) has been called by the Committee to discuss the changes made to the Club’s Constitution following actions arising at the Annual General Meeting in February.

The EGM will commence at 7.30 p.m. in the URC Hall and be followed by a showing of the WCPF Travelling Prints Critique.

Our last competition of the season, which contributes towards the Mayors Cups, was judged by Clive Greenland from Corsham. Although Clive is a relatively newly qualified WCPF judge, he analysed our prints and DPI entries in an informative, balanced and empathetic manner. He outlined the positive aspects of each image whilst also mentioning any potential distractions that diverted focus away from the main subject matter and also offered some ideas that could contribute towards enhancing the images.

In the Prints category, Adam Kowalczyk made a clean sweep achieving first, second and third places. The DPI category was more keenly contested with three different authors claiming the top three places. The winning DPI was “The Stare” from Geoff Snowball.

After judging was completed, Clive showed some of his prints, mainly wildlife images of which several had been taken at the WWT Slimbridge Wetland Centre.

The points accrued over the four competitions can now be tallied and the winners of silverware identified.

The Quad Battle between Devizes, Stratton, Swindon and ourselves took place at Devizes Sports Club and was an entertaining and well attended event. Whilst we had compiled an impressive selection of 15 digital projected images with high expectations, the other Clubs had done likewise and sadly with a greater degree of success. The Battle was keenly contested and featured very high quality and striking images that certainly challenged Eddy Lane, who judged the entries. In a close finish Devizes Camera Club won with 268 points, followed by Swindon PS with 266 points, Stratton with 258 points and RWB with 256 points. Nine of the sixty images were awarded maximum scores of 20 points and congratulations to Geoff Snowball who achieved a maximum score for us.

Whilst we finished in 4th place, we were competitive throughout and were up against some excellent images that found more favour with the judge’s viewpoint.