Our second evening of the new ImageZ club season on Tuesday 15th September was a “critique” evening for our members. This is an evening that we hold occasionally where members are invited to submit three of their images that they would like critiqued either to hear judges views or in preparation for possibly entering them into the club competitions. We had 53 images entered from 28 members.
Before the judging Chenxi Ni our External Competition Secretary talked about the annual Rose Bowl competition, and requested members to send him any images that they felt were good enough to be entered in this competition. He stated that if any member belonged to more than one Photography Club he or she should decide which of the two club they wanted to put the entries into, and to inform both clubs of their decision, as it is not possible to enter through both clubs.
The evening was split into two halves. The first twenty three images were critiqued before a brief five minute break, and the remainder after that time.
Our three judges, Kathy Chantler, Alan Taberer and Julia Cleaver are circuit judges, who are members of our club. Each judge spoke in rotation about an image, followed by observations from the other two judges. We had a very wide selection of subject titles, covering most aspects of photography from landscape, seascape, to birds, animals and insects, local scenes and well known places to visit, flowers, autumn colours, Intentional Camera Movement and abstract, portraits, reflections and the occasional humorous image. The titles mostly reflected the content of the image, but one or two were left to the judges to decide whether or not the title fitted the image, and some of the images warranted interesting discussion.
At the break Derek Green mentioned that the virtual Photography Show was taking place in Birmingham on Sunday, and that it was free to register for this event. He mentioned that the show is giving talks throughout the day.
After the break the remaining images were critiqued. All three judges gave different perspectives on each image and were very encouraging. The author was then given the opportunity to talk about the image, and ask any questions that they wanted to.
Zoom has given members an opportunity to keep in touch with each other during restrictions with the Corona Virus, and also allowed the club to have judges and speakers from outside our area, and allowed all circuit judges to cover wider areas from within their own homes.
It was a very enjoyable evening, and one which members are pleased to have occasionally because on normal competition nights it is not possible to interact with the judge.
Our thanks to Kathy, Alan and Julia for their excellent and much appreciated critiques of our images.
Jan Dell
Great blog Jan!