26 September 2023
PDI Merit Competition – Judge Eddie Lord
We were very pleased to welcome Eddie Lord to judge our 1st PDI Merit competition of the season. Eddie is the Chair of Crawley Down Camera Club a member of Mid-Sussex Camera Club and an accredited Southern Photographic Federation Judge. Eddie began the session explaining his roll and the subjective nature of judging camera club competitions and that constructive criticism would be given, with more feedback for beginners to aide their personal development.
As this was a Merit competition the images were submitted under three categories of photographer – Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced. We had a total of 92 entries for the competition: 39 Beginners; 35 Intermediate; and 18 Advanced. We had 33 attendees in total, including Eddie Lord. There was a great collection of fine images submitted for critique and scoring from Eddie. He discussed every image in detail and gave hints and tips throughout the evening. These included ensuring that the “hero” of the composition was clear and well represented. How the eye can be distracted by bright and high contrast areas elsewhere in the image and not to forget to move “high and low, left and right or closer”. Also consider different aspect ratios (by cropping) to get rid of areas not contributing to the overall image.
Following the judging, Eddie selected his favourites from each category (those held back) and from them the Winner from each Group (see below). His ‘Best in Competition’ went to Kevin Hobbs with ‘Fairground’. Whilst it was a long evening Eddie ensured everyone received some constructive feedback and having said “thank you” we closed a very successful first competition meeting.
The winners from each group category were:
Beginners – Kevin Hobbs “Fairground”;
Intermediate – Grant Lawrence “Racing in the Rain”; and
Advanced – Mike Doyle “Common Blue Butterfly”
Click on an image to see a larger version.
Congratulations to all of the winners, and to all of our members for entering such an amazing collection of beautiful images.
Our very grateful thanks go to Eddie for his excellent judging, comments and critique of all the images and we would also like to send a very big thank you to all our members for continuing to support our lovely club.
The Committee