November Mold Camera Club Competition Results

Whilst felling very sorry for myself (man flu!!) earlier in the month I managed to submit my entries for this months Mold Camera Club Competition. Once again I hadn't managed to get anything mounted therefore all of my entries were into the projected amateur category.

The three images that I submitted where:

Belly Of The Beast
Life's a ball
Parisian Night

The judge was a lady from the Wrexham Camera Club, and she was a real 'detail' person, picking up on lack of sharpness, blacks not being true black, lack of tones etc. I wished that I had not bothered submitting anything!!

Belly of the beast received quite a good mark (15), apparently this is a fine example of tonal range within a B&W image. This image caused quite a bit of intrigue, nobody could quite figure out if it was a prison or a hospital of some sort. I didn't have the heart to tell them it was a hotel!!!

Life's a ball did not score well (13), the colours on the projector really did look dull. The judge likes the candid approach to the photograph. This again proved to me that if you want to know/control exactly how your image is going to look you have to print and mount. When I have printed this the colours have looked quite vivid.

Parisian Night received great remarks from the judge, apparently this was not the image of someone that should be in the amateur category!! This again grabbed me Third place in the amateur category.

Once again beaten to the top spot by an image from Jonathan Frings; in particular this image. It is a great image though!!

Try and try again.... Persistence pays off!!!

OK so I didn't get up at a godly hour again. This time I opted for the sunset rather than sunrise from West Shore, Llandudno. And I was rewarded greatly for my efforts!! At first the sunset didn't look anything too special but for a 20 minute period it was awesome.

Here is the first of many.. This is pretty much straight out of the camera. I have just slightly cropped the left hand side to improve the balance.



And another.... (17/11/08)

Early morning at pastures new!! (Llandudno)

Bright an early this morning I got up (04:45) to get to Llandudno nice and early to give me plenty of time to find a good photo spot. I was there for about 06:00 and things were not great. The met office had got it wrong (which is unusual as they are usually spot on). It was muggy and there was a constant drizzle falling!! Oh well as I was up I thought I would do the best I could.

By 08:15 I had decided that I was fighting a losing battle. It was already too late for a sunrise shot and it was too light for any slow exposures. I made my way back home...

I got two real shots out of about 60.....





There is however lessons to be learnt on all outings. Today I had a list of things I wanted to try.

1. Geo tagging using the iPhone (This worked very well and was extremely accurate - Click to see)
2. Exposure Bracketing (There wasn't really any need to try this out this morning
3. Location spotting (Not too bad found a couple of paths that I wasn't aware of previously)

The biggest lessons I learnt however are:

1. Make sure you always have a good cloth to clear the front of the lens in case of rain/drizzle
2. Always prepare your camera (filters) before stepping foot on a jetty. They are pretty treacherous places to stand!!!
3. Take lots of pebbles with you when trying to get a jetty shot to scare off the birds. Once you are on the jetty there is very little to pick up and throw!!

Oh well, I'll keep trying.....