Travels Towards the Edge | 12 October 2021 |
Intrepid travellers, Sue O’Connell (ARPS, EFIAP/p, DPAGB, BPE 5*) and Peter Brisley (ARPS, DPAGB, BPE1*) enjoy visiting unusual, far flung destinations. Using Zoom for the presentation, Sue said that such visits can be challenging but also very rewarding as you can get to see life in places that very few get to view. Usually travelling with just a driver and guide they often stay in very basic accommodation with the local people. |
Competition 1 - Open Projected Images | 5 October 2021 |
The club’s first competition of the season was a bit of a technical challenge as some members were ‘live’ in the clubroom, some were watching from home on zoom and the judge was in Skye! The computer, projector and sound equipment all had to be tied up together but luckily, thanks to the tech guys who set it up, it all worked well with only a few minor glitches.
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Approaching the Coast | 28 September 2021 |
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A Personal Response - Chris Palmer FRPS EFIAP DPAGB APAGB | 21 September 2021 |
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Getting the Best from your Camera - a practical workshop | 14 September 2021 |
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Member's Successes | 9 September 2021 |
![]() Awarded a Gold Medal in the Nature section of this prestigeous competition was David Wilkinson with his image ![]() It is a very great honour for any photographer to recieve such an award. David also had an image titled 'Wild Tawny Owls Feeding in DayLight' accepted in the Nature section. Another member who gained awards in the competition was Robert Harvey ARPS EFIAP who had 5 acceptances. In the Landscape section 'Llyn Cau at Sunrise' right was accepted as well as 'Brimstone Butterfly on Betony' in the Nature section. In the Travel section 3 of Robert's images were accepted - 'Milky Way over Kyance Cove' Milky Way over Portland Bill' and 'North Landing, Flanborough Head' To encourage members to enter their images in Salon's the club has the Ryder Rathband trophy awarded annually to the member with the most awards. If any other members have gained acceptances in any salons in 2021 then please keep a record and show your list at the end of the year. |
Welcome to the New Season | 7 September 2021 |
We’re back, so it was great to be able to meet up once again the clubroom after 18 months of just meeting on Zoom. |
A Shot in the Dark | 17 August 2021 |
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Architectural Photography - in search of the 'genius loci' | 3 August 2021 |
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Mongolia - From Steppe to Eagle Hunters | 20 July 2021 |
Award winning professional freelance landscape and travel photographer Julian Elliott took us on an interesting journey to see the landscapes and people of this vast country. |
Adventures of a Wildlife Photographer | 6 July 2021 |
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WCPF Members Exhibition 2021 | |
Congratulations to two club members who have gained acceptances in the Western Counties Photographic Federation Members Exhibitions. ![]() Robert Harvey ARPS EFIAP had entries in both competitions. In the Print Classes, Robert had 2 acceptances in the Open Colour Class, 1 acceptance in the Open Monochrome and 2 acceptances in the Nature Class. Robert's Nature image 'Large Marsh Grasshopper' gained a Selector's Award. In the 2021 Digital competition Robert gained 2 acceptances in the Open, 2 in the Nature and 3 in the Photo Travel Class. Robert was awarded a Selector's Award for his Travel image 'Overlooking Petra' David Wilkinson also gained acceptances in the 2021 Digital Competition with 4 acceptances in the Nature Class. Very well done to both members. Robert's image 'Overlooking Petra' is shown right. |
Chasing the Light | 1 June 2021 |
Keiran Metcalf BPE1* joined us on Zoom! from the Peak District to give us his presentation entitled Chasing the Light, sub-titled Confessions of a Sunburst Junkie. |
Congratulations | |
![]() The club congratulates club member David Wilkinson on his recent Salon successes. David had 2 images accepted in the Nature section of the Cheltenham International Salon 2021. The images were titled 'Brown Hare Sitting Alertly' shown right and 'Red-breasted Merganser Feeding'. David also had an image titled 'Red Squirrel Leaping' accepted in the Neath & District UK Salon 2021. Very well done to David. |
Annual General Meeting | 18 May 2021 |
Club members once again used Zoom for the AGM as it has for the whole of the club meetings of the 2020 - 2021 season. |
Ladies -v- Gents Battle - a Win for the Gents | 11 May 2021 |
Time once again for the annual contest between the genders at the Club but it’s not at all competitive of course! Without knowing who had taken the images, the Judges each awarded points out of 10 without conferring beforehand. Both Pam and Eddy gave a very good critique on each image and as they are very experienced Judges it was not surprising that in most cases they agreed and gave very similar points. Usual comments about cropping and adding more contrast – especially to monochrome images – some of which were described as rather ‘grey’. Another comment that came up several times was that an insect or a bird on a twig would, if appropriate, look better if the twig was not strait up or strait across. They suggested rotating the image slightly to give a more diagonal line which helps make an image more dynamic. Comments were given and points awarded as each image was shown and very soon the Gents were well ahead with 9 images having the maximum 10 points from at least one judge by the interval and only one Ladies image had a 10. The halftime scores including the bonuses were Gents 274 and Ladies 250. The Ladies picked up a bit in the second half with the Judges giving 6 images10 points and the Gents had 3 more 10’s. This was still not enough to catch up the Gents score so the Ladies lost on this occasion with the final scores being - Gents 543 and Ladies 503. |
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![]() ![]() This was a very unusual sepia toned still life which both judges said made them smile! It took a lot of imagination to use teabags and clothes pegs to make an interesting image! Dave also got 10 from both judges for his well titled image ‘Still Fighting’ right This depicted a forest scene with an ancient tree with just the broken remains of the trunk but still alive with a small branch emerging with fresh green leaves! Dave also got 4 bonus points added as he is in the Intermediate Section so congratulations to Dave. |
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Just missing out on the double were seven images that got a ten from one judge and a nine from the other including a creative flower image by Pam titled ‘Pastel Delight’ right Shown below are several delightful landscapes which did well including ‘Sunrise over River Kennet’ by Bridget Codrington, |
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Well done to all those whose images were chosen by the Captains for the Battle Notably the Ladies had entries from 2 new members who had never entered club competitions before so well done to them. Many thanks to Pam and Eddy for taking the time and trouble to judge the images and give their helpful comments. Thanks to the two captains, also Dave Gray, Frank Collins, Dave Eagle and all those who helped make it such a good evening. |
Projected Image of the Year 2021 | 4 May 2021 |
The club was delighted to welcome Adrian Herring ARPS DPAGB to judge the clubs last club competition of the season. Adrian is very experienced judge and his difficult task was to pick out the ‘best of the best’ from images that had gained either a first, second or third place in club competitions. The entries were from Open competitions as well as the annual landscape, nature, monochrome and creative competitions. Adrian said that it was a most challenging competition to judge as all the images had already been classed beforehand as worthy winners. A number of images were held back from each of the 3 sections as a short list of images which Adrian said that he had particularly enjoyed. |
The Great Post-Processing Challenge | 27 April 2021 |
The challenge to members was; given a RAW file what can you do with it? |
‘Mastering Mountain Photography' | 20 April 2021 |
On Tuesday 20th April, we welcomed Alex Nail on Zoom!, all the way from Bath, to give us his presentation entitled “Mastering Mountain Photography”. |
Open Projected Image Competition No 3 | 13 April 2021 |
Wiltshire photographer David Sage ARPS judged the club’s final open competition of the season. David has been taking photographs for about 40 years and gained his Associate Distinction with the RPS in 2014. He looks for originality and something a bit different when he is looking through the images entered. The winners he chose from the competition entries ‘jumped out’ for him. He likes to give all entrants feedback on their images as it is a good way to learn how to improve your photography. David had looked in detail at the EXIF and the settings used and had also checked the images using the histogram. Comments were made about cropping out unnecessary areas of the images to make better compositions and increasing the contrast to make some of the images stand out more. |
Devizes CC v Frome Wessex CC – Inter-club Battle | 6 April 2021 |
Full scores can be found here |
Two Pairs of Eyes | 30 March 2021 |
Long standing friends of the club John Tilsley ARPS, APAGB, DPAGB and Di Tilsley APAGB CPAGB made a welcome visit to the club to show images of their recent travels. Even though they are often at the same location at the same time they take usually take different viewpoints and aspects. |
WCPF Members Exhibition | |
![]() In the Photo travel section Robert was awarded one of the selectors awards for his image titled 'Overlooking Petra' right and also an HC for 'Sandstorm, Namib Desert' Congratulations also to David Wilkinson had 4 acceptances in the Nature section of the competition. David is a relative newcomer to salons but has recently had success at the Bristol Salon with 3 acceptances in the Nature Section and also 2 acceptances in the South Birmingham Digital Exhibition. Members from any of the affiliated clubs can enter the annual Western Counties Photographic Federation Member Exhibition.Usually an exhibition of the print entries is held and a slideshow of the digital entries for the public to view. Last years exhibition was cancelled but the digital entries have been judged this year. You can see the prizewinning entries on the WCPF website |
Open Projected Image Competition 10 (Print 2) | 23 March 2021 |
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GB Cup - results | |
In a change to the rules this year, we were allowed to enter as many images as we liked, all of which would be judged, and the best 12 scores used to make up our final score. This at least meant that a single error in selection would not impact the overall score. On an individual level, congratulations go to Robert Harvey, who scored 13 (out of 15) for ‘Sidewinding Adder’, 12 for ‘Milky Way over Pondfield Cove’ and also 12 for ‘Stonehenge by Moonlight’. DG See the full results Images © Robert Harvey ARPS EFIAP |
Wildlife Through a Lens | 16 March 2021 |
Multi-award winning, wildlife photographer, Tom Way gave an excellent presentation to the club. His images have a very distinctive style with usually just one animal as the subject either as a close up portrait or against a simple uncluttered background. The image of a white rhino is a typical of Tom's style with it’s clean background and unconventional, centrally placed subject. |
Creative and Close-up/Macro Competitions | 9 March 2021 |
Full results All the awarded images can be seen in the Galleries |
The Landscape Group Presents ... | 3 March 2021 |
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Photoshop Clinic - part 2 | 23 February 2021 |
The club was delighted to have Ray Grace ARPS DPAGB back for a second time to give members advice about using Photoshop. Ray came to us in December and answered many queries but has come back to answer some more questions on this very comprehensive editing software. |
Annual Landscape Projected Image Competition | 16 February 2021 |
Making a welcome return visit to the club was Peter Orr ARPS to give his judgement on images entered in the Annual Landscape competition. |
Close-Up and Macro Photography – Art & Techniques | 9 February 2021 |
For our latest Zoom! evening, we welcomed Adrian Davis MSc ARPS with his presentation entitled Close to Nature. Adrian is essentially a “natural history and wildlife photographer” with a particular interest in Close-up and Macro photography. The distinction between the two, he said, was that Close-up means images of anything “closer than normal”, whereas Macro refers to images in which the magnification in camera is at least 1:1 |
WCPF - DPIC Competition 2021 | 7 February 2021 |
DPIC 2021 was a virtual affair this year, with over 360 members of Western Counties Camera Clubs joining a Zoom call to see the judging. It was gratifying that 58 clubs had submitted entries, very much on a par with previous years. This meant that as usual, we were treated to just over 1000 excellent images from all photographic genres displayed over the course of 2 For newcomers to DPIC, it is the Western Counties annual ‘Digital Projected Image Competition’. Competing clubs each submit 18 images, with limits on the number of images per author and number of Nature images allowed. Each image is scored by 3 judges who award it a mark out of 5, giving a maximum score per image of 15.
When all was done, Devizes had achieved a creditable =14th place, with an overall total of 204 points. We were towards the upper end of a tightly bunched mid-table, and just 8 more points would have moved us level with the club which came 3rd. Our congratulations go to Bristol Photographic Society who were winners with 226 points, and Dorchester, whose 215 points gained them 2nd place. Within our entry, congratulations go to David Wilkinson for his ‘Brown Hare Sitting In Stubbles’ right, which achieved our highest individual score of 13 points. Also, congratulations to Robert Harvey for ‘Sidewinding Adder’ left, which scored 12 points including a 5 from one judge. DG |
Wildlife Reintroductions and Conservation and Southwest Wildlife Photography | 2 February 2021 |
Wildlife conservationist and photographer Nick Upton made a welcome return visit to the club to give an update on some of the projects he is involved with and also a look at some of his latest projects. Since his last visit Nick has been given the Conservation Documentary Award at the Bird Photographer of the Year 2020 for his project on swifts and the work of the Bradford on Avon Swift Group. |
Annual Monochrome Competition | 26 January 2021 |
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Member’s Speed Critique | 19 January 2021 |
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