PAGB Projected Digital Image  Competition

Well, we didn`t come last!!!   Not quite.  There were two clubs worse than us!!

 

Here is the story and images.

 

 

Terry, Ed and myself went up to Warwick the day before the event and Philippa Wood from Gwynfa joined us as well.  We had a great day on the Friday taking photographs in Tewkesbury with excellent weather, and then went into Leamington Spa in the evening. We had booked in to one of the Inns at the services which was not so cheap but very cheerful.

Next morning we were off early to get to the university by 9-15am.   We then met Jenny and Nige from Bridgend who had got up at 5 to travel up in the morning.  Boy was I glad we didn`t do that!!

 

Enough of this - on to the nitty gritty.

 

First of all there are two rounds of 8 images from each club.

There are three judges and they can score either 2, 3, 4, or 5.  A score of 3 is average - therefore a score of 9 is a reasonably good image.  However , to do well you need scores of 11 to 15.  Difficult for us as you will see.

 

The scores are added and the top 8 or 9 (depending on ties) go through to the final competition and the rest go through to the plate competition. (It`s very much like the ACE of Clubs comp that the WPF have.)   BUT just to give you an idea of what we were up against my image 'Wintry Wood'  which got the FIAP Ribbon only scored 9 !!

 

Round One images and scores as follows;    (Robert will put these up on the web site eventually but most of you have seen them quite a lot so you will recognise them easily)

 

Millennium Centre, Cardiff.......Ray.....12

A Conference of Pears.............Jan...11

Female wheatear..................Phil R....12

Hair raiser...........................Karen...13             Our highest score   WELL DONE KAREN

Martes Martes (Pine martin)...Roger...12

Zing Quartet  ......................Mike D   9          This was also another of our award winner!s to score 9 !!!

Subway departure..............Ed..........10

Platform Drama...................Jan........11

 

This gave us a score of 90 which put us in joint 11th out of 32 clubs.   Pretty good, but we were fast using up our best images and now comes the crunch!  You have to decide which images are doing well. No landscapes gor higher than 9 - most were getting 8.   Snowy scenes were doing particularly badly and were scoring 6 or 8.  Natural history were always a good banker but some images were spectacular - this is where Bridgend did well as Jenny Hibbert`s Natural history images were great!  Some  scored 13.  We tried to use images that we knew had done well in the past.  This didn`t work too well!!!

 

 

Our scores in round two were...

 

Rusty tipped Page...........Mostyn..........10

Mocker Swallowtails........Margaret  ......10

Scurry Racing.................Mostyn  ......   11

Utopia.............................Pam.....   ....11

Descening......................Ed...............11

All Mod Cons kitchen........Dave Allen...10

Leading pack.................Ed....9

Wintry Wood.................Jan......9

 

This gave us a total final score of 171.  This put us in joint 15th out of 32 clubs.

 

The ones in RED in the first round were our highest scores and therefore we chose these four to go forward to the last round BUT we also had to find four new images to go with them.

 

Now the problem..No snowy scenes, no landscapes - what to pick.  We had used up our best images and this is where the other clubs (including Bridgend scored well - they keep their best images till later. We didn`t have enough to do that.

 

So we decided to pick images from some other members to try them as by then we knew that we weren`t going to do well. Also images with people in tended to do better so in the end we picked the following...

 

Alien Presence.............Terry.........9

The end of the line .......Mike B.....  9

On the beach with Dad...Jan..........9

Electric surfer.............Phil R..........6.

 

and

Millennium Centre      Ray          12

Hair raiser     Karen                 13

Martes martes............Roger     11

Femail Wheatear........Phil R.....11  as you will see these last two images dropped a point  from the first round.   No control over this at all.

 

 

Which gave us a score of 80 in the last round.

 

We were 21st out of 23 and Bridgend with one point more were 20th .

 

What is so depressing for me is that all these clubs enter every year and therefore have a bank of 40 excellent images (obviously NOT including all the unpopular sorts such as landscapes etc) which they can produce every year.  We had to trawl through three years work to achieve what we did.  It sort of puts things into perspective.  We need more work.  We need to get out and take more photographs.  We also need more of us to get out to these competitions to see what we have to achieve to compete.

 

What the judges look for is work of excellent quality.  All creative work will only score well if it is of the highest technical excellence, and images with people in do score welI.  I did notice however that the popularity of cut out images or old people in front of their house has faded and these did not score well.  There were quite a few of excellent quality sports images amongst the winners. The overall competition was won as usual by Wigan 10. When the PAGB issue their winning images I will ask Robert to put them on the web site. 

 

We thoroughly enjoyed the day and I personally got lots of new ideas form watching - it was a great experience and I can`t wait to go again next year hopefully just to watch and therfore be able to relax.

I just wish that more of you had been there.

Now click here to see the images