Well, what a night Sidmouth Photographic Club had on 15th March, in their annual inter-club ‘Battle’ with Honiton Camera Club!
Honiton organised and hosted this year’s contest and as such, they had also provided the titles for the set subjects category. Nineteen Sidmouth club members travelled to support the competition on a dark, damp evening, joining Honiton club members and guest judge Malcolm Macnaughtan from Dorchester Camera Club. Malcolm’s task was to critique each (anonymous) image and award marks out of 10. He gave concise and thoughtful feedback on all the images: 20 Prints and 10 Digital Projected Images (DPIs) with set subjects plus 30 open category DPIs.
Prints were first, in categories Landscapes, Mono, Portraits, Creative and Nature. The quality of all the prints was very high and at the end of this section, Honiton had 84 points and Sidmouth 85 - so very much anyone's game!
A break provided the chance to peruse the prints, socialise and enjoy a wonderful cream tea provided by Honiton members.
Back to business, and Malcolm went on to judge the DPI set subject categories: In All Weathers, Playing with Time, Pretty in Pink, ICM and From the 19th Century, before working his way through the open DPI selection.
There was an impressive mix of styles and genres from both clubs - again generating close marking. Malcolm’s final task was to select his top three images from the Battle, which earned each author an extra 1, 2 and 3 points respectively. And so, the closing scores were... Honiton 249, Sidmouth 258. Congratulations to the members whose images were included in the Battle, securing another impressive win for Sidmouth.
SPC congratulated five of their members who scored the maximum 10/10, which undoubtedly led to the club’s success (only seven top scores were awarded) and gave a special mention to Paul Gale, whose print Blond Capuchin (Print - Nature) was also chosen as Malcolm's favourite of the competition, earning an extra 3 points - a well-deserved recognition for his beautiful capture.
Images from the Sidmouth vs Honiton Battle are shown here, together with some high scoring entries from SPC internal Competition 5, which was held a few days later, on March 20th. Judging DPI and Mobile entries with thorough critique and humorous anecdotes was Gordon Aspland from Newton Abbot Photographic Club.
More information can be found on the club’s website sidmouthphotoclub.org
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