ICM Challenge - February 2023. Bleak or Wild. Charlotte Bellamy Photography

Welcome to the second of the 2023 ICM challenge publications. After last year’s massive success, I have decided to organise once again, an annual ICM challenge for my creative group.

I created this ICM challenge, to offer a friendly competition within the creative group I run for all previous course attendees and mentee students. It is to encourage interaction in the group and to offer a reason to share or make photos in reaction to a prompt. Each month in 2023, a new challenge subject will be set in the group. It may be interpreted however an individual wishes, but the ICM technique must be the overriding element in the image. I have chosen an outside judge for each challenge to offer a wide variety of feedback and varying outlooks on ICM photography.

This is a cumulative competition:

• Points 1- 10 are awarded for the top 10 placings each challenge. (1st place gaining 10 and 10th place 1)

• A point is awarded to every entrant to say thank you for submitting. In December there will be an online awards evening, with some small prizes, and to celebrate everyone’s achievements.

The Bleak or Wild challenge

The Bleak or Wild challenge is now complete. Once again, I was delighted with the number of individuals submitting to the challenge. Congratula tions and a massive thank you to all who submitted and got involved. It is amazing to see so many different ways of interpreting a trigger word – one person’s bleak may refer to something in relation to the future of the environment, whilst for another it is the feeling captured. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the images were black and white, but it was lovely to see bleak or wild also depicted in colour as well – no easy challenge.

This challenge the entries were judged by Doug Chinnery. I was delighted when Doug agreed to help with the judging. He was my very early ICM inspiration, and watching his YouTube videos gave me much guidance and help and I will forever be grateful for that. Over the years, I have watched his style grow and develop, and his images now resemble pieces of art, rather than just being photography, and I love this. I was lucky enough to follow a day course with Doug and Valda many years ago, and took much away from this that you still see in my work today.

Doug now works closely with Valda Bailey (the judge of our next challenge) and together they have created a wonderful creative community.

https://fyv.art - our online community site where you can enjoy a two-week free trial with full access to all of the teaching, forums and other things we have in there. Please do check out the other websites as well as a thankyou to Doug for judging this challenge.

www.baileychinnery.com and www.dougchinnery.com

Doug said to all the entrants “Congratulation s to all of the entrants - whittling it down to ten was difficult, but here is my selection with my thoughts on the top three”

If you are interested in online or in person courses, please check out my website for more info www.charlottebellamy.com

I also have a You tube channel https://www.youtube.com/c/CharlotteBellamycreativephotography/videos

Please email with any questions or comments Charlotte@charlottebellamy.com

Copyright remains with each of the photographers, please do not save in anyway the images from this document.

Without further ado – I would like to introduce you to your winners. Congratulations to the top 10.

Judge’s comments

Winner – Joy Tracey

I chose this image as the clear winner for me because it has a great sense of place and evokes in me a feeling of what it was like to be there. Instilling emotion like this into an image is incredibly hard, but this photographer has used ICM to evoke the wind and wildness of this location - enhanced by the high-key treatment of the image which adds to the ethereal nature of it. Well done.

Runner up – Ania Rolinska

Judges comment

This image also has a great sense of place. The wild openness of this wilderness landscape. I was entranced by the way the photographer used ICM to capture the stunning light and give a sense of backlit rain squalls - adding to the wild feeling it evokes.

Judges comment

Steve Knight

I chose this image for its great use of gentle ICM combined with a wonderful subject. The foreground tree, bent by the wind immediately tells of the wild bleakness of this place. Too much camera movement and I feel the image would have been spoiled - but the photographer has wisely just used a suggestion of blur to add movement, energy and painterliness to the image. The wildness is accentuated by the glorious colour palette.

Janet Richardson

Charles Thorne

Mary Seddon

Colin Smith

Barbara Kato McKenzie

Federica Morgan

Lorraine Grey

The other entries

Tommy Cronholm

Angie Robertson

Reiner Heisel

Jaane Ostby

Michelle Jackson

Moy Calverley

Mirriam Manners

Malcolm Brown

Sue Woodbridge

Birgitta Larsson

Christine Griffiths

Camilla Rutayisire Gore

Anne Kleff

Chris Hynes

Jaana Kotoneva

Dawn Westwood

Debbie Christie

Valerie Huggins

Nicky Wearmouth

Gunilla Steen

Marion Woodman

Sally Barker

Charlie’s picks

This year I am going to pick a selection of images out of the challenge after the judging is complete

so these images will never be the same as the top 10. I just wanted to have the opportunity to recognise even more of the beautiful images. There is no t a set number each month, so some months you may see more in this section than others, especially if I agree with the judge on all their choices! These images all achieve a bonus 2 points.

Just to say this challenge was insanely difficult to pick my extras as every single one in the challenge hit the brief of ‘bleak or wild’ beautifully. So these that I have chosen this challenge for me gave me the greatest feeling of wild or bleak.

This month’s images are:

Malcolm Brown

Picked because the feeling of nature clashing with man-made for me is so strong. The contrast of such strong lines with the natural shapes is beautiful, and I loved the colour used in the post processing as well.

These Skelton trees with a hint of snow on the ground offer a really bleak and wild feeling to me. I look at this and feel very alone in a silent wood. The colours and effect brought by the layering of images works very well.

I look at this image and feel cold! It really looks like a bleak place to be in the depth of winter – the ICM movement adds a feeling of an icy wind blowing through the wood which also adds a wild feeling as well.

Tommy Cronholm

Marion Woodman

I love this for its unique take on this challenge theme. I get a feeling of looking out through a window towards a landscape that feels bleak. The colour is super and the extra detail in the textural overlay fills part of the image that would have otherwise been very empty.

This image is successful in this challenge through its very muted monotone palate It’s like there is no colour left in the scene, no light or dark – only monotony- and to me that would be very bleak. I love how the ICM shapes fill the image.

Camilla Rutayisire Gore

Moy Calverley

I often stand at my window, looking out into the bleak landscape through the rain on my windows. This gives me that exact same feeling. The ICM movement has smudged and wiped any clear vision away, and the shapes left are angular and harsh.

Sue Woodbridge