Herald Edition - 11th November 2020
Irvine Camera Club’s annual set subject competition evening was held this year on Bonfire Night. We ask the club members to take 2 photos for each theme. This year our themes were Street Life, Nature and Landscape. The idea of this is to take people out of their comfort zones and encourage them to try their hand and a genre of photography that they perhaps might not otherwise engage with.
We had a splendid entry of over 100 photographs for our guest judge, Ruth Hayton, from Ayr Photographic Society to get her teeth into. Ruth is an experienced photographer but she has only just recently started to judge photography competitions. From this assured and confident performance nobody would have guessed that this was her first Zoom virtual judging. Her friendly and engaging style was very much appreciated by the members.
The Street Life section threw up a wide variety of styles and interpretations of the theme. Ruth picked out several for commendation but eventually settled on Bob Wark’s candid photo of a boy scout group “Possibly Not” as the winner. She particularly liked the carried expressions on the faces and the clever juxtaposition of the billboard behind the group. One of our club’s beginner photographer’s started off her night well with second place for her cheeky shot “Ladies Waiting” and also a Highly Commended for “Little Monster”. Not surprisingly Tracy took the Best Beginner award in this section. Another beginner photographer, Robin Gemmell, took Third place with his “Penny for your Thoughts”.
The Nature section presented Ruth with a variety of very different subjects with our members showing a passion for field craft and fantastic knowledge of their chosen subjects. Autumn is a great time for fungi photography so it was no surprise to see a few images of them in this section. Debbie Andrews scored a Highly Commended with her fantastically textured photo of 3 puffballs. Once again Tracy Ross took best beginner with a simple but effective image “The Forest Floor” which placed 3rd. Alan Campbell got second place with a beautifully lit shot of a red squirrel eating nuts. Clive Watkins took first place with his macro photograph “Fast Food” of a snail perched on top of a mushroom.
Finally, we moved on to the Landscape section. Ruth was treated to stunning scenery from all over the world and once again the standard of photography was very high. Tracy Ross completed her clean sweep of Best Beginner picks with Ruth awarding her a Highly Commended for her beautiful “Sunrise at Loch Tulla”. Last year’s winner of the Landscape section, Pete Heywood, came in third this time around with his lovely seasonal “Ode to Autumn”. However, it was our seasoned landscape enthusiast, Kevin Thorne, who took both 1st and 2nd place respectively with his atmospheric and dramatic “After the Storm” and the stunningly beautiful “Great Langdale”.
Well done to everyone who was recognised by Ruth for their work and I hope that everyone else takes inspiration and encouragement from her comments. If you would like to join us you can find all our details on the website www.irvinecc.co.uk
Comments
Great selection of images. Well done everyone.