Camera Clubs
- Thread starter DD_Crash
- Start date
This is my club
I have a couple of images in there (David Kelly)
Gallery
Featuring the work of Andy Polakowski, Carol Griffiths, Dave Jowitt, Gary Jones, Janet Davies, Jan Wilson-Chalon, Matt Morrow, Pam Sheldon, Rich Hainsworth, David Kelly, Julia Hodson and Tracy...
www.moldcameraclub.org.uk
I am a member of a club but haven't been for many months.
I very rarely enter any competitions but if I do it's would be the Landscape one which I won with my Print and Digital entries this year.
It's actually the competitions that put me off as a lot of people enter photos which are staged and hardly what I class as their own work yet they take full credit for it.
Examples, studio portraits where they've gone on a workshop and had everything done for them and all they have to do is point and shoot. Or "wildlife" of a Kingfisher or similar catching a fish where again it's been setup and they know exactly where the fish will be for the Kingfisher to catch etc etc.
I very rarely enter any competitions but if I do it's would be the Landscape one which I won with my Print and Digital entries this year.
It's actually the competitions that put me off as a lot of people enter photos which are staged and hardly what I class as their own work yet they take full credit for it.
Examples, studio portraits where they've gone on a workshop and had everything done for them and all they have to do is point and shoot. Or "wildlife" of a Kingfisher or similar catching a fish where again it's been setup and they know exactly where the fish will be for the Kingfisher to catch etc etc.
Yeah I used to do a lot of competitions including the national ones, as well as club competitions and it actually put me off photography for a while.
Some of the regular winners were spending fortunes on workshops, like the place in Scotland with the ospreys, (trout pond with a hide) and so on.
I might rejoin one in future more for the social aspect, I’m intensely competitive- and I’d rather just stay out of the competitions these days and do my own stuff.
I had a lok to see what local clubs were around me before and all of them seemed to be business schemes to sell workshops or entirely made up of retirees that all produced the exact same kind of images. I didnt see any that seemed like interesting groups to join.
A lot of Mold members spend a fortune on workshops with models but thats not for me. I do like editing, I use On1photoRAW and Affinity Photo and love changing the look of the image. My Misty Tree got a commended last night. I will post the image plus the other 2 entries in the photo thread.
Caporegime
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The stuff that i like to photograph never seem to fit with any of these clubs and competitions.
Sometimes the judge hasnt got a clue. I entered a formation of 3 Spitfires and he said that I had used a blur filter on the props when if he had looked at the exif he would have seen it was taken at 1/350th of a second.
Caporegime
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- 20 Oct 2002
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Haha, I question of their knowledge, some of them are very old school and not familiar with some of the modern techniques. I mean I remember on TP forum I once posted this photo and half the forum accused me of using a flilled flash...I know i didn't, why would I lied about not using a flash?
I've learned that if winning the comps is the most important thing then you need to know your audience - not saying that's a good or a bad thing.
I do have some pretty big gripes with our local club(s). From the outset, I'm not saying that my photos are the be all and end all but unfortunately what is never seen is either the story or the effort behind the photos - at least not until after the judging.
Most notably was the wildlife category we ran this year. The top 3 finishers were all photos of a fox taken on a day trip to a captive nature reserve (basically a minimum security zoo
) - in fact at least 2 of the photos were of the same fox! In technical terms the photos were excellent from composition to IQ. My photo on the other hand was of an actual fox in the wild staring down a magpie which is a very rare sighting around our way. On a technical and compositional level it wasn't on par with the others but to my mind it was much more genuine effort at capturing a "moment" than just rocking up to a glorified zoo.
Another one is/was the Astro category we run. A couple of years ago the club loosened it to Astro/Low Light because members were complaining they didn't have the competency to take astro shots. I still use it as an opportunity to present my Astro work but more often than not I lose to people who have entered a street photo at night or a sunset - again all good photos in their own right but not meeting the brief in my opinion. I entered a photo of a moonrise that was meticulously planned and executed but it didn't even place! Fortunately for me I do enjoy the "chase" so to speak.
Then there's the other side which very much comes down to the judges. There was a "Motor" round at one of the inter-club competitions and I entered a shot that I'm particularly proud of which was a Formula 1 car with the engine cover removed. The lighting was on point and it has won awards elsewhere. I think it's fair to say that the judges didn't give a hoot about F1 because the winners were shots of vintage cars and machinery. Nothing wrong with that of course but they weren't even particularly inspiring photos, they were just pictures of stuff rather than a worked image - no attempt at composition, lighting or any creative flair at all.
Sometimes I wonder why I continue to go
.
Truth be told I wouldn't have got into printing had it not been for the club and competitions and I do enjoy the company of like minded people, especially when it comes to planning photo walks/trips.
I do have some pretty big gripes with our local club(s). From the outset, I'm not saying that my photos are the be all and end all but unfortunately what is never seen is either the story or the effort behind the photos - at least not until after the judging.
Most notably was the wildlife category we ran this year. The top 3 finishers were all photos of a fox taken on a day trip to a captive nature reserve (basically a minimum security zoo
) - in fact at least 2 of the photos were of the same fox! In technical terms the photos were excellent from composition to IQ. My photo on the other hand was of an actual fox in the wild staring down a magpie which is a very rare sighting around our way. On a technical and compositional level it wasn't on par with the others but to my mind it was much more genuine effort at capturing a "moment" than just rocking up to a glorified zoo.Another one is/was the Astro category we run. A couple of years ago the club loosened it to Astro/Low Light because members were complaining they didn't have the competency to take astro shots. I still use it as an opportunity to present my Astro work but more often than not I lose to people who have entered a street photo at night or a sunset - again all good photos in their own right but not meeting the brief in my opinion. I entered a photo of a moonrise that was meticulously planned and executed but it didn't even place! Fortunately for me I do enjoy the "chase" so to speak.
Then there's the other side which very much comes down to the judges. There was a "Motor" round at one of the inter-club competitions and I entered a shot that I'm particularly proud of which was a Formula 1 car with the engine cover removed. The lighting was on point and it has won awards elsewhere. I think it's fair to say that the judges didn't give a hoot about F1 because the winners were shots of vintage cars and machinery. Nothing wrong with that of course but they weren't even particularly inspiring photos, they were just pictures of stuff rather than a worked image - no attempt at composition, lighting or any creative flair at all.
Sometimes I wonder why I continue to go
.Truth be told I wouldn't have got into printing had it not been for the club and competitions and I do enjoy the company of like minded people, especially when it comes to planning photo walks/trips.
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I've never been overly interested in competitions myself, I might submit to online ones from brands if there's a tasty prize on offer with no expectations of getting anywhere but the briefs and requirements they often feel so restrictive and don't match what I like.
When I was looking at clubs a lot posted their past comps and winners on their sites and I noticed that i was seeing the same few names pop up over and over again and it was always the same kind of thing.
When I was looking at clubs a lot posted their past comps and winners on their sites and I noticed that i was seeing the same few names pop up over and over again and it was always the same kind of thing.
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I met my wife at our then-local photographic society (Ealing & Hampshire House) 45 years ago so membership can have its advantages. I did learn a lot about photography while I was a member and had moderate success in the slide competitions.
I've not joined the local camera club as its annual exhibition entries look more like the members showing off their expensive holidays than anything else.
I've not joined the local camera club as its annual exhibition entries look more like the members showing off their expensive holidays than anything else.
Associate
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- 17 Dec 2015
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- 329
I've been a member of my local camera club (BACC in Aberdeen) for about 10 years now. I've learned a lot over the years and seen some excellent presentations from lots of speakers, more so now in the zoom era.
I'm now printing a lot at home which has focussed my attention to the minor details and distractions you otherwise miss when first editing a photo, and I'm more aware of compositions that work and those that don't.
We are lucky in that the club owns it's own premises with a fully equipped studio which is free for members to use (for non-commercial work).
I started entering the monthly DPI competitions after a few years, which has improved my editing and I'm more aware of the type of image that is likely to be judged favourably. There's also an accreditation group which meets separately once a month, which actively encourages and supports members to work towards RPS and/or PAGB accreditation.
The club has some very skilled (and award winning) nature and portrait photoraphers, and some who are excellent at landscapes and creative works. Over the past 6 or 7 years, I've almost exclusively submitted motorsport images for the competitions. Sometimes I do quite well, possibly as my work is something different to the more common nature, landscape and portrait entries, and sometimes very poorly. One judges comment was "it's a record shot of a motor car" and then went on to wax lyrical for 5 minutes about lovely feather detail and catchlights in a birds eye in what many thought was an average "bird on a stick" image
.
Despite concentraining on motorsport, my most successful image has been one I took many years ago during Storm Frank, which earned me an SPF (Scottish Photographic Federation) medal for best digital image.
I'm now printing a lot at home which has focussed my attention to the minor details and distractions you otherwise miss when first editing a photo, and I'm more aware of compositions that work and those that don't.
We are lucky in that the club owns it's own premises with a fully equipped studio which is free for members to use (for non-commercial work).
I started entering the monthly DPI competitions after a few years, which has improved my editing and I'm more aware of the type of image that is likely to be judged favourably. There's also an accreditation group which meets separately once a month, which actively encourages and supports members to work towards RPS and/or PAGB accreditation.
The club has some very skilled (and award winning) nature and portrait photoraphers, and some who are excellent at landscapes and creative works. Over the past 6 or 7 years, I've almost exclusively submitted motorsport images for the competitions. Sometimes I do quite well, possibly as my work is something different to the more common nature, landscape and portrait entries, and sometimes very poorly. One judges comment was "it's a record shot of a motor car" and then went on to wax lyrical for 5 minutes about lovely feather detail and catchlights in a birds eye in what many thought was an average "bird on a stick" image
.Despite concentraining on motorsport, my most successful image has been one I took many years ago during Storm Frank, which earned me an SPF (Scottish Photographic Federation) medal for best digital image.