Preparing Your Images for Competitions, Tuesday 8th October 2019

Hi Folks,

Tuesday night Chris and Chenxi did a talk on preparing images for entering club competitions.

Chris said, entering competitions is not all about winning but more about competing against yourself, to see if you can improve your photography.

Chris explained the scores can go up and down as any person’s choice is subjective which will include the judges.

However, all the judges have had training and will know what to look for in an image.

It is also encouraging to see new images created by members within the club as we all learn from them.

The club has five League Challenge Cup rounds but to have a realistic chance of winning it one must be enter images in each round.

Plus the club has three ‘winner on the night’ competitions.

Entering images will also helping the club, as these images can be used by the club (with approval) in outside competitions such as the Rosebowl.

This evening it is about making the best of images that one has taken.

Chris handed the floor to Chenxi to talk about sizing images for club competitions. Chenxi explained that this can be done in windows software along with many other software programmes.

In competition sizes for Landscape images must be no bigger that 1600 w x 1200 h pixels

or

Sizes for Portraits no greater than 1200 h

As the projector shows a black background any dark images will need a light key line ( border) to show the judge where the image boundaries are.

 

Only registered paid up members can enter competitions and Chenxi went through the procedure for entering images which is also on the club’s website.

The first competition is a winner on the night competition next Tuesday. However, all entries must be entered by Sunday midnight to be in time for Tuesday’s competition.

So please add any images before then and not leave it until last minute if you need help.

Chenxi will assist but needs more time than 30 minutes before midnight lol.

Coffee time

In the second half Chris said, sometimes one may find the image colours on ones laptop are different from the image shown on the projector.

To try and keep ones images  in line with the projector the club has a calibrator machine which is available to club members to tune the colours on ones laptop.

It was suggested that this be done approximately every three months as screens do change with updates.

Most camera have a colour space setting and it is usually set to SRGB so check that setting is correct.

 

There is software to check colours

This is before calibration, notice the orange in the second top picture

 

After calibration the orange in the same picture is more vibrant

 

Next Chris talked about images and how to improve them.

One of the first things is to make sure any horizons in any picture are straight, as judges always pick on that.

However, there is an option in most software to straighten it and one does not have to take the picture crooked to straighten it as below lol.

Also in the Rhino image Chris can see a person dressed in red behind the fence. Red always leads the eye away from the main subject and could be cloned out.

Also there are white bits in the sky and they could be removed by cropping them out.

In this next picture the raccoon has too much white on it’s left and it’s tail is also missing

 

A lot of the white could be cropped out but the tail is just a loss.

 

Camera’s usually have a large number of pixels to use and as the club’s projector only uses 1200 x 1600 of them. So it will allow one to pick a small area to show in the image without it pixelating on the projector.

 

And if one wished the area of the raccoon’s head only could be shown.

Chris gave a tip of turning an image upside down to show up any bright areas, as one’s brain disconnects from the subject taken and can focus more on the brighter areas better.

 

Chris said these are not going to be winning pictures but used as a lesson on removing unwanted items. Things like white stones that distract from the subject of the car and the removal of those brown markers near the edge of the picture will help improve it.

 

In this last picture taken by Chris’s wife whilst on holiday, the image means a lot to his wife as they were both there in that spot with the mountain in the distance. To enter this picture in competition one would have to clone out a lot of half stones in the fore ground. The trees could be straightened but the judge does not have any attachment to the picture and will just see a pile of stones with a mountain in the distance. So it is important not to get too attached to a picture unless it tells a story or is a wow picture.

 

So Chris is looking forward to a good number of entries for this coming Sunday’s deadline to be in Tuesday’s competition.

So next week is

Winner on the Night Competition – 1