Seaford Photographic Society

We have taken the reluctant decision not to hold our annual exhibition this year. This is particularly disappointing as last year’s was such a success at the new venue. With the current COVID-19 situation currently worsening, our prime concern has to be for the safety of our members and the public, and we felt that we couldn’t guarantee this. Since I started writing this the new Lockdown#2 rules have come into force so it wouldn’t have been possible anyway. We hope to be back to normal next year and, in the meantime, you can see a selection of our best work in the members’ galleries and competition winners on the website www.seafordps.org.

The first two set-subject competitions of the season were ‘Creative’ and ‘Home and Garden’ judged by Steven Galvin LRPS. The Home and Garden competition inevitably featured lots photos of members’ beautiful gardens but the winning image, ‘Vinyl Rules’ (photo left) by Chris Dawson, was taken indoors. The judge commented that this was a ‘marmite’ image, that people would either love or hate, but he loved it. ‘Shower Time’ by Simon Rigby took second place, Sylvia Carter’s photo of flowers from her garden was third. The Creative competition certainly lived up to its name and the winner’s trophy went to ‘Practice Your Scales They Said!’ (photo below) by Colin Mitchell. In second place was ‘Guitar Music’ (photo top) by Heather Roberts, and third place went to Janice Hewitt.

We were pleased to welcome two new members to our next meeting, which featured a lecture by acclaimed Street Photographer Ian Boulton. We enjoyed Ian’s photos, taken mainly on the streets of Bath and Bristol, and particularly the stories that went

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with them, and how he had got to know many of the local characters.

The third round of the PDI League competition for Projected Digital Images was judged by awardwinning Uckfield-based professional photographer Judith Stewart (www.judithstewartphotography. co.uk), and we had a record 72 entries, with 26 people attending the Zoom meeting. A particular ‘well done’ to Anna-Marie Armstrong (photo right) and Colin Mitchell (photo below), both of whom managed to get the maximum score of 20/20 for two of their images. ‘Evening Rest’ (photo below) by Jack Taylor and ‘Little Egret’ by Simon Watkins also did particularly well. Anna-Marie and Colin are

currently in the lead in the Standard and Advanced groups respectively, with just one round of the league competition to go.

We were pleased to welcome another new member to the club for the final Zoom meeting of the month and again we had a record number of people attending. ‘Seeing Opportunity’ was a wide-ranging and fascinating lecture by Erica Oram CPAGB AFIAP BPE3* about how to spot more interesting photo opportunities wherever you are, and she included lots of helpful technical details. Her approach is to take a quick photo when she arrives somewhere, which is usually the one that everybody takes, then spend some time looking around for interesting angles, details, patterns, lines, shapes etc. She also showed us some of her street photography, which is all about capturing a moment in time.