Competitions
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You have different selectors for print and digital, why is that? Mainly to give as many entrants a chance to get an image accepted and maybe even an award. Judging tends to come down to the judge’s personal taste. By changing the judges we hope to achieve a variety of accepted and winning images. Howdo you choose the selectors? The judges are selected by me so I take ultimate responsibility for the success or failure of the exhibition. Most of the judges however are tried and tested by other exhibitions, both nationally and internationally. Do you have any advice on how entrants can get their images noticed by the judges? Pictures with impact tend to do better than ones without impact. Images that are technically very good also do very well. The judges only have a few seconds to view the image in front of them and in order to gain a high score it has to have the wow factor or striking simplicity. Whatmakes a successful exhibitionentry; is there anything entrants should definitely avoid doing? Try and be different or put a different spin on a common subject. Think outside the box to achieve a stunning image. We get loads of images of the same subject and these tend to be common landscape viewpoints. If we get 40 or more images of Bamburgh Castle only one or two will tend to be accepted. The
same can happen with any common subject when we get multiple images of the same subject.
There are also three club trophies up for grabs, can you tell us more about those please? The club trophies were designed to show the variety of individual clubs from across the federation. We have a trophy for PDIs (the Derwent trophy) one for mono prints (the Hiscox trophy) and one for colour prints (the Chesterfield trophy). Clubs select four images with different subjects to make up their club panel. As the images are scored through the selection process these are recorded and totalled up at the end, providing the winning club. Who is the camera club to beat? Without a doubt it’s the Rolls Royce Photographic Society, which has dominated for the past few years and compared to most clubs in the federation has a very small membership. Take 2013: they had 77 accepted images which was almost twice as much as the nearest rivals. In 2014 that figure was increased to 91 and the club also took a lot of the major awards. Any predictions onwhat types of images you’ll be seeingmost of this year? I really wouldn’t like to say – we get some really stunning images and it’s all down to the judges’ personal taste, or lack of it. What kinds of images would you personally like to seemore of? I would like to see more of our younger members and female members taking part. Also not every club enters so it would be really nice to get at least one image from every club in the federation, for our 60th anniversary.
ABOVE TOP RIGHT Beachcombers by Gary Langley of Rolls Royce Photographic Society (Derby). ABOVE BOTTOM RIGHT No Passage Landward by Chris Newham of Nottingham Outlaws Photographic Society. RIGHT Hibiba by Jim Edmondson of Bakewell Photographic Circle. TOP LEFT From the Aspects of Burma Panel by Chris Forster of Rolls Royce Photographic Society (Derby).
Want toenter?
If you live in Nottingham, Derbyshire or Lincolnshire and are a member of a club affiliated with N&EMPF, then you’ve got until 18 October to enter your images. You can submit up to four images per class and it costs £1 per image. The final exhibition will be held at the Mansfield Museum for a month in the new year. Not local to N&EMPF? Check the PAGB website (www. thepagb.org.uk) for similar exhibitions running in your area.
In order to gain a high score it has to have thewow factor or striking simplicity
π To find out more, go to www.nempf.org.
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Issue 12 | Photography News
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