Seaford Photographic Society

You don’t necessarily need expensive camera equipment to take good photos, and every year we give our members the opportunity to demonstrate this with a competition just for phones or tablets. This is a fun, informal competition where everybody sends in their images and club members vote for their favourites. The winner this year was Adrian Bishop, with Janice Hewitt and Thelma Long taking second and third places respectively. The meeting finished earlier than usual, so we all sat around for an hour or so chatting about photography.

The penultimate round of the second PDI league for Projected Digital Images was judged via Zoom by Jonathan Vaines AFIAP CPAGB LRPS. In the standard league A Bee on Fatsia by Stephen Day (photo left) was the only 20 scoring image and there were only two 20s in the advanced league:

Glyndebourne Organ Room by Chris Dawson (photo right) and ‘White Feathers’ by Kevin Smoker (photo below). At the end of the evening the overall league scores were incredibly close. In the advanced group Colin Mitchell and Simon Watkins were in joint

first place with 97, and Anna-Marie Armstrong and Chris Dawson both just one point behind, with 96. So, there was all to play for going into the final round the following week. This one was judged by David Eastley LRPS, and it was a pleasure to welcome David back to Seaford in person this time. As always, he did an excellent job with the judging, carefully explaining what he liked about each image, but with plenty of suggestions about how they could be improved. The main point of the competitions is to listen to the critiques and apply them to one’s own work. This was a good introduction to the club for new member Maria, who was attending for the first time. All the high-scoring photos this week were nature themed, for which the club is getting a good reputation. Changing Colour by Stephen Day (photo top) scored a 20 in the standard league, as did Stephen Day’s gliding seagull image. In the advanced league Simon Rigby’s unusual Egret Feet (photo second from top) did well, along with Anna-Marie Armstrong’s blue tit and reflection. The final league scores, together with the Photographer of the Year winner, will be announced at the awards evening at the end of May.

We had an informal Show and Tell evening to end the month. This started with some members doing a ‘before and after’ chat about one of their images, showing it unprocessed, then after editing. There were some good examples of how a bit of post-processing can transform an image into something with much more impact. We also tried to answer some specific editing queries that people had. The evening finished with our chairman giving a short talk on focus stacking.

You can see all you need to know about the club on our website www.seafordps.org, including the latest news, programme of events, successful images, competition results, and how you can join us.