24th January 2023
PDI Merit Competition – Judge Ian Bateman
We were, once again, very pleased to welcome Ian Bateman to judge our 3rd PDI Merit competition. Ian has been involved with camera clubs for between 40 and 50 years, and in that time has been a member of Wantage Camera Club until moving to Exmouth in Devon. He has been the Chairman of Exmouth Camera Club and the President of the Western Counties Photographic Federation. Ian likes general photography, but he does specialise in audio visual presentations and he is on the panel of the Royal Photographic Society and the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain.
As this was a Merit competition the images were submitted under three categories of photographer – Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced. We had 45 entries in total, with 14 from the beginners, 16 from the intermediate category, and 15 from the advanced category. We had 22 members attend via zoom, and a super collection of fine images were submitted for critique and comments from Ian. He discussed every image in detail and gave hints and tips throughout the evening, which included considering shutter speeds to freeze action, and ensuring to use a key-line on dark backgrounds. Other useful suggestions included using directional light to give more form and texture, careful cropping to ensure incidental objects around the edges of the image are not included, soft focussing, colour balance, composition, using natural framing of a given subject (if possible), and ensuring aspect ratios with landscapes to ensure all of the image is captured
Following the judging, Ian selected his favourite from each category, which are listed below. His ‘Best in Competition’ went to Kevin Hobbs with ‘Lost World’. Having said farewell to the judge, members stayed behind to continue their discussions on other images in the competition and gained an insight into the techniques used, which rounded off a very successful evening.
The winners from each group category are as follows:
Beginner: Kevin Hobbs – ‘Lost World’
Intermediate: John Nalaskowski – ‘Christmas Lights Abstract’
Advanced: Mirza Khurrum Baig – ‘Kite Surfer’
Congratulations to all our winners, and to our members for entering such an amazing collection of beautiful images.
Our very grateful thanks go to Ian for his excellent judging, comments and critique of all the images, as well as Kathy for including him in our programme, also to Rob for collating and presenting the images, and Kevin and Jackie for keeping additional scores throughout the evening. We would also like to send a very big thank you to all our members for continuing to support our lovely club.
The Committee