A Bit of Fun

[Mike Farley]

Tonight's final round of the print competition is a dead rubber in the Advanced class as the outcome will have no bearing on the overall result. My interest finished in the last round when my favourite shot from last year did not just bomb, it sank without trace after a mauling by the judge*. Monsieur Gray, who is very hard to beat, does not even have to turn up this evening. I expect and hope he will, and give us the benefit of yet another fine selection of shots. My congratulations go to a very worthy winner.

That leaves me with the same quandary as I had last year, when I put in in some tat simply to make up the numbers and another member got upset with me for not submitting my best work, even though it would have been wasted in respect of the competition. It seems a shame to do that again this year as we have by far the best judge of the season, for either print or DPI, coming to look at our work. Instead I have delved into my back catalogue and found some shots which I liked at the time, but due mainly to a lack of post processing skill** could not do much with. Two are definitely not the style of image that tends to well in camera club competitions*** and ordinarily I would not want to risk using them, although I do not kid myself that they are good examples of "fine art" either. My aim is to give the judge something a bit different to look at and see just how well, or badly, that type of work fares. It is also enjoyable looking at older work which brings back memories, as well as yielding the odd**** image which was overlooked at the time.

* No reflection on the judge. I submitted the same image to the SPA Biennial and it got the lowest score in my entry. 8 on both occasions.

** Improvements in software have helped as well.

*** Chocolate box.

**** In both senses, probably.

[davidc]

I don't blame you for not always submitting your best work, I usually put in two I hope would do well plus one I wanted feedback on. If you don't have any chance of winning the competition then whats the point of "wasting" known good images when you could save them to next year. I'd put in three marginals in that case and hope to be able to significantly improve them for the future.

What image was mauled?

[davidc]

I must admit "mauled" is very click-baity
You have piqued my interest for sure.

[Mike Farley]

Well, have fun I did. It was remarkably relaxing when there was nothing at stake and having three images in which I had no great expectations. They fully justified my faith in them. An image for which no critical comment was offered got a lower mark than the one the judge really had a problem with and perhaps what was the weakest of the three got a certificate. Maybe taking a different approach also had on effect on others, as people kept forgetting my name. Hilarious. I have not enjoyed a club meeting that much in ages.

I must admit "mauled" is very click-baity
You have piqued my interest for sure.

Not "click-baity" at all in this instance. You got away with it this time.

Personally I like all three of the shots and possibly they are closer to the sort of work I would be doing more often if I was not shooting to show at the club. As I said previously, judges tend to like a certain style of shot which means that other types of work can get overlooked. Over the next few days I'll put all three pictures into the Image Critique forum and let people make of them what they will.