LEEK PHOTOGRAPHIC CLUB

THURSDAY night saw 30 printed images from nine members for the competition “Urban”.

Judge Ralph Duckett [MPAGB, APAGB, EFIAP] seemed to enjoy the process tremendously.

He adopted a novel approach by reviewing all images in detail with constructive comments.

He chose not to select any at that time to “keep the suspense going” – which it did .

Then during the intermission, he narrowed the 30 down to 12 (more suspense) and finally chose just eight awards.

Those awards were shared between five members with the first place entry getting fairly universal approval as a deserving winner. That honour went to David Travis for his print, titled Let me help you with that.

David’s composition combined

Imagination and forethought with patience and planning.

He said: “I like street photography so people in front of advertising hoardings or murals was attractive to me.

“Research revealed there were some great murals and I hunted this one down on Mitchell Street (in Glasgow).

“I spent about 30 minutes in this spot and took about 50 photos but ironically this image was one of the first that I took.

“The two people in the shot were a couple of tourists who plonked down their bag looking for something, completing an amusing and well caught moment.”

And David added, for the technically minded: “There’s not a lot of postprocessing done on the picture. I needed to straighten the building (using Lightroom’s Transform tool) and I tidied up some scratches around the mural to make it look a bit cleaner.

“I chose black and white because there’s not a lot of colour in the picture, other than in the mural.

“I was about 30 yards away when I took this picture. It’s taken with an Olympus OM-D EM-5 Mk 2 and a 17mm lens (34mm equivalent on full frame) 1/125s, f/4.0, ISO 200”.

This was not David’s only success on the night as he was also awarded a third place.

Len Claydon was awarded both a second place and a highly commended.

Tony Cartrwright had two commended with Ray Baddeley and Kevin Burton completing the commended awards.

Leek Photographic Club is committed to all levels of interest and experience in photography and currently has a small exhibition of members’ work in prints on display in the Visitor Centre at Tegg’s Nose Country Park near Macclesfield which runs until December 11.