So, as the dust settles on another very successful Shrovetide Football match we settle back into our usual routine at Camera club. Shrovetide showed the football again as a Heritage event of unique importance. Many images were taken and shown locally, nationally and internationally both in newsprint, television and social media. Truly a historic event worthy of its importance and value to the town of Ashbourne.
Ashbourne Camera Club took the Wednesday off at Shrovetide to allow our own photographers time to record memories of this year’s game. The rest of the month continued with our programme of meetings. Usual fare of talk, competition and a meeting to discuss Photographic matters. The talk was by Mike Sharples, a member of renowned and successful Smethwick Camera Club. The talk was titled, “ Places and Faces”. The main part of the talk concentrated on his love of storytelling images, which were based around people at the Black Country Museum. He meticulously photographs people in costume and places at the museum. Each has its own story and is told by the way he manipulates his photographs. Some can take many hours to refine, but the finished photograph is a special insight into lives of people in Victorian and Edwardian times. Places were chosen from Iceland and city scapes from all over the world. He has a particular liking for skies, again many hours spent processing the images.
David Kissman came to judge our Competition titled Orange! Again presenting problems of how to represent that colour in our images. In some entries we were left in no doubt about orange and the amount of it. In others it was a little more dubious whether it was in fact orange or in a suitable amount. It was a similar experience to the abstract competition, earlier in the year, when similar understandings were not clear. Rob Sample won the print section with “Pumpkins” and David Slade with a very familiar images of the Roaches. Well done to both.
At the last meeting, we invited the judge, Dave Hollingsworth, to a meeting to discuss the process of judging and to answer some members questions around the process of Judging our images. He agreed to come back and a very honest and useful interaction over many points in this subject. He was very open and honest and used his own experiences of Camera Club membership and competitions to demonstrate how he views images that are presented to him. He talked about what he looks for, the pitfalls we could fall into and offered tips and examples of good practice to help us achieve what our images deserve. A very welcome insight into judging in a very honest and common sense way.
So readers, that’s February gone for another year. We have the rest of the season to tackle with vigour and a little more idea of how to avoid some hiccups. But, readers, part of Photography is to record memories for the future and to compare lifestyles from now and the past. How many gaps are there in your family albums or lost in your phones? Have you got images of Grandparents or where you grew up?
