Due to personal circumstances, these ‘comments’ cover several weeks. Before I start I would like to hope that everyone has an excellent New Year, I hope ours finishes better than it started!
In December, Jane Goodall gave her acclaimed talk 'The Beautiful Light'; where she showed us many of her superb landscape photographs. She gave us a lot of tips about shooting landscapes. She also gave tips to ensure personal comfort when going out to shoot them - eat before you go, take snacks and don't get hungry, take a warm hat, wellingtons, as well as a small torch if going out at night. She maintained that if you are not hungry, cold or wet then you can concentrate on your photography and that if you are already in the water you don’t have the worry of it attacking you. Words of wisdom indeed.
Our first meeting of the New Year, which was extremely well attended, was an open competition judged by Peter Espley, who gave his usual comprehensive critique of the entries. He focussed on titles and mount colours. There were plenty of projected images this time but it would have been nice to see more prints; perhaps the Christmas period was the reason?
The annual Tripod competition between Stowmarket, Framlingham and Wymondham was again well attended by members of all three clubs. The judge this year was Brian Carlick LRPS, from Suffolk Creative group, who was very complimentary about the entries. As it is every year the standard was very high and congratulations must go to Wymondham, who romped away with the win (in both categories), with Framlingham coming second. I hope that this competition will continue; we’ll just have to try harder! My thanks go to Sandra Hullis, Mrs Hyland & Mrs. Hawes who put in a superb effort in providing the mid-session refreshment which, once again, was were well received. I would like to send my, and the club’s, best wishes to Roger Knight of Wymondham and wish him a speedy recovery.
The first meeting in February was our wildlife competition for the 'Ray Griffin' tankard, which was judged excellently by Phil Chatfield.
Phil has been to the club many times before and it was pleasing for him to tell us that the overall quality had gone up and that, in general, composition was good. In addition to his judging, it was a privilege to get some invaluable advice from an experienced photographer as well as tips on achieving different views of the same subject.
The competition was won by Geoff Walker with his entry of 'Butt Out' (2 male antelopes squaring up to each other); congratulations to Geoff for that and also for getting 'highly commended' for his other two entries. Second place was taken by Helen Lang, with 'Red Breasted Goose'. Helen also took equal third place together with Sid Kenworthy for 'Grey Squirrel, and 'Dormouse' respectively. Additionally, 'highly commended' was given to entries from Roy Fidler for 'Young Chaffinch' and Paul Kent for 'Bottlenose Dolphin'.
It was good to see several newer members entering and getting good comments from our judge.