Our 2022/23 season concluded with the presentation of awards for our Annual Competition winners in the three categories of Action; Portrait and Open subjects. Trophies were also presented to the winners of the four competition rounds that had been held throughout the season.

The Mayor of Royal Wootton Bassett, Councillor Eve Silvester presented the awards and enjoyed viewing the entries submitted along with the images taken locally during a practical evening of outdoor photography. around the town.

Over refreshments there was plenty of dialogue about how images had been taken and some of the main trends being seen in the photographic world. By her own admission, the Mayor indicated that her pictures didn’t always turn out as expected, which is something we have all experienced at one time or another. One obvious solution was muted for when she has more spare time to practise photography.

Our Annual Competition for prints and projected images comprised three categories viz; Action; Open and Portrait and was well subscribed, especially the projected images section. The competition was judged by Beryl Heaton from Bristol Photographic Society, who was ably assisted and supported by husband Danny.

The prints section was judged first and all the entries will be displayed at our annual exhibition in the local library during the last two weeks of August. Our small but enthuastic core of printers submitted some excellent images and the winners of the sections were as follows

Action – Fast turn by Dave Garmont

Open: Sprocket and Spud by Jim Bullock (which was also judged as the best overall print)

Portrait: Having a laugh by Nigel Walkley

The projected image sections were well populated which tasked the judge with a large workload so her comments were succint but thoughtful. The winning entries were:

Action: Red Arrows by Rob Slade

Open: Common Blue damselfly by Alan Pryor

Portrait: Bashful look by Peter Hodgson (which was also judged as the best overall projected image).

Attendees enjoyed viewing a diverse range of images throughout the evening and in one week’s time, on June 20th, we will have our Awards Presentation evening with the RWB Mayor in attendance.

Following a couple of successful indoor practical photography evenings, we decided to venture outdoors and challenge members to take some images of Royal Wootton Bassett. To encourage members to spend more time and thought in preparing and visualising the images they wished to take, some boundary conditions were set. Only 10 images in total could be taken in jpg format and had to be sequentially numbered and no in-camera post-processing was allowed. In essence we were trying to replicate the restrictions that naturally arose in the past when shooting with 35mm slide film which meant you had to strive to get everything right at the time of shooting.

Although the light was flat, and despite a chilly evening breeze, members generally enjoyed the experience of exploring the nooks and crannies of Royal Wootton Bassett and spent around 90 minutes searching for some different images.

Needless to say some discrepancies arose and one member, whose camera was set for continuous high speed shooting, took their 10 images far quicker than they had imagined with only one subject.  After the exercise, we convened for some well earned refreshments at The Angel and images were loaded onto the Club laptop and will be viewed after the Awards Presentation evening on June 20th.

Members were treated to a full evening of audio-visual presentations which had been entered into last year’s Western Counties Photographic Federation Competition. In total 30 AVs had been entered across 3 main categories: Short; Long and Photo-harmony.  Short related to presentations that were less than 4 minutes in length; Long included presentations exceeding 4 minutes and a Photo-harmony section enabled participants to demonstrate their skills in marrying images through appropriate transitions and strong harmonisation with the sound track. 

We progressed our way through the designated menu and referred to the judge’s comments after each AV to compare our perceptions and conclusions. It soon became obvious that we would not have sufficient time to view all the entries and towards the end of the evening we focused our attention on the winning entries in each category.

As always the subject matter was diverse ranging from documentary type AVs giving an insight into interesting historical scenarios exploring places both in the south west and far further afield to more abstract type productions. The common theme was that each told a story in its own particular way and the skill, patience and creativity that had been used to achieve the final results was evident for all to see. We will look forward to viewing the remaining AVs at a subsequent meeting.

Our fourth and final round of competitions that scored towards the Mayor’s Cup trophies featured Open and Glass set subjects and was judged by Peter Crane from Swindon. The print entries were judged first and the interpretation of the set subject resulted in several entries based on the same idea of still life images of glass items. In some cases the old adage of “less is more” applied with simpler arrangements giving a more balanced composition and greater focus of the viewers attention.

The winning prints were “Angles” by Nigel Walkley in the Glass section and “Saxophonist” in the Open section.

A healthy number of projected images were received and the winning Glass entry was “Bottles and vase” by Jim Bullock and “Double Take” by Dave Garmont winning the Open competition.

With our Annual Competition around 6 weeks away, members still have plenty of time to compile their strongest entries in pursuit of the various silverware trophies that will be awarded.

We were treated to an inspiring and thought provoking talk by Susan Clark from Conwy Camera Club who shared her knowledge and experiences on the topic of “Composition – Rules and Myths”. 

Sue had extensively researched the way in which composition contributes to the impact and visual appeal of an image with some of the so-called rules dating back to ancient times. The Fibonacci rule of numbers was discovered in the 12th century and shows up in nature, human anatomy, structural designs, the shape of spirals etc.  The Golden Ratio is also a mathematical concept that can be seen in landscapes like the Pyramids of Giza through to modern day designs of corporate logos.

Lots of compositional techniques ranging from use of colour, textures, shapes (especially triangles), leading lines, cropping, rule of thirds, flipping images and others were illustrated with myriad examples from the world of art, television, film and photography. The psychology of viewing an image and deriving emotion and aesthetic pleasure during the process can be strongly influenced by the subconscious effect of many of these techniques which permeate our daily lives.

It’s fair to say that we will all look through our camera viewfinder with a refreshed and more educated viewpoint.