Posts tagged nature
Cambridge Digital Inter-Club Competition 2023
Cambridge Digital Inter-Club Competition 2023

The regional club competitions start each year with the Cambridge Digital Inter-Club Competition and it’s always a good chance to meet up with old friends and photographers from other clubs and see some of the best images from around the region. This year was the first in person meeting for a few years because of the effects of covid and those effects were still evident. Normally 35 clubs compete with a waiting list and there have been up to 190 visitors but this year numbers were down with only 27 clubs entered and only around 60 external visitors, but it was still a good meeting.

The Cambridge club are very well organised the competition runs very smoothly, and their catering team provide very good cakes. There are five rounds, Mono, People, Landscape, Nature, and Open, each image is marked out of 20 and the highest scoring club is the winner.

Ralph Duckett MPAGB EFIAP APAGB, from Staffordshire had the hard job of judging this year. He has been a member at Burton on Trent Photographic Society for over 40 years. An experienced PAGB judge, he gave concise and useful comments with good humour on each image and awarded very high scores to many of them, his opinion being that the standard was very high. Ralph awarded 37 images with full marks of 20/20 and this gave him a very difficult job to select his overall winning image. He whittled these down to a final 7 images but then threw it out to the audience to help him select the winner – not the most conventional way to pick a winner but this ended the afternoon with at least the winning photographer happy!

 Five members from NDPS went along to observe the competition. Two of our 5 images scored 20 and overall, we ended with 94 points, out of 100, putting us in equal 8th place slightly down on last year but still a result we were very happy with. Top club was Photographic Imaging Co-Operative (PICO) with 99, second was Welwyn Garden (98), third North Norfolk Photographic Society (97).

Next up are the St Ives Interprint and the EAF Championships. If you get the chance to go along and watch the judging it is recommended as it gives you a good feel for the standard of work in the region and will inspire your own photography.

 Review by Dave Balcombe ARPS & Joan Jordan ARPS

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CompetitionMaurice Youngcambridge, digital, inter-club, monochrome, people, landscape, nature, open
Cambridge Camera Club Digital Inter-Club Competition
Cambridge Camera Club Digital Inter-Club Competition

Last Saturday afternoon after the judge, David Lowe ARPS , DPAGB from Smethwick had delivered his critique for the images entered by the twenty-five competing EAF Clubs taking part in this year’s competition Norwich & District Photographic Society tied on 90 points with Ampthill & District Camera Club and Shillington & District Camera Club.

Unfortunately, David chose the reserve image from Ampthill, so they were declared the winners with NDPS, and Shillington declared ‘equal second’.

Near but so far. Nevertheless, this was outstanding achievement and confirms the recent successes by NDPS in other inter-club competitions and the continuing growth of talent and commitment to improvement amongst the Society’s members..

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Competition, Cambidge Inter-ClubMaurice Youngphoto-competition, people, scenes, nature, monochrome
The World of a Wildlife Photographer - David Boag
The World of a Wildlife Photographer - David Boag

Yesterday's presentation to the Society was by this professional wildlife photographer, billed as enthusiastic, encouraging and entertaining he certainly lived up to his billing. There was no 'Muck and Mystery' from this self-effacing speaker!

This was (mostly) a journey through his work for book illustration interlaced with anecdotes not just about the photos, which were wonderful, but also about the human interactions in his professional journey through life to pay the mortgage and feed and clothe the family.

There were many things to take away from this presentation. Firstly he explained that because the end use of the photographs was a book then he always worked on specific projects and he always had a theme. But he said that he was not special in any way and anyone could take these photographs providing they wanted to.

David's view of the weather raised a smile in the audience as he gave his view that there were not four seasons. There were 365 seasons! Every day is different and you can take pictures in any weather conditions and not produce boring pictures but ones that have a monetary and artistic worth.

He said that it is vital to know your equipment and how it works, never forgetting that it is the photographer who takes the picture not the camera. A 'poor' photographer will still be 'poor' even with expensive top of the range equipment. Having mastered the camera remember the theme and concentrate on timing the shot.

A very entertaining and informative evening by a consummate professional. Our thanks to David .

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Special Event, Special PresentationMaurice Youngphoto-talk, nature, wildlife
Tesni Ward wows Norwich & District Photographic Society with an inspirational talk...
Tesni Ward wows Norwich & District Photographic Society with an inspirational talk...

On Tuesday night (7th January) at our meeting in the Methodist Hall Norwich & District Photographic Society hosted the award-winning Wildlife and Nature Photographer Tesni Ward who delivered an inspiring highly illustrated photographic talk titled ‘Photography in the Peak District’.

Tesni explained that towards the end of 2014 she was dedicating more time and energy into photography and this steadily evolved until March of 2016 when she decided to take the step to becoming a full time photographer. Working as a wildlife photographer she said is challenging but extremely rewarding and that she aspires to use her images and stories to promote conservation and to educate the public on the struggles wildlife faces and what we can do as individuals to help protect the many species currently under threat from human activity.

It quickly, became apparent why Tesni is becoming so successful.  Her images are full of character and emotion, and it is clear that she has a down-to-earth sympathetic approach to her work – if only more of us could emulate some of that magic...!

More importantly Tesni knows her wildlife, where to find it, and most of all how to use a camera to capture it. 

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Special PresentationMaurice Youngphoto-talk, wildlife, nature, mountain hares, badgers, the peaks