A few highlights from my recent email

Competition 5

Unfortunately, the judge for Competition 5 has had to cancel.  Due to the short notice, and that this was a print competition we have had to move Competition 5 to April 26th.  The good news is that we’ve extended the closing date for entries till March 29th.  If you’ve already entered, sit back and relax unles you want to change your entry.

On Feb 15th, we’ll now hold an informal club competition with the usual knockout format.  There’s a space on PhotoEntry in the single competition category for you to upload 3 entries.

The images should be new images but you can use them in the future for normal club competitions. Look forward to seeing your images from as many members as possible.

Competition 6

This is still on March 15th, and yes I know it’s before comp 5, but we’ve had another judge change so this is now on Zoom!  Themes and deadlines are unchanged!

For logistical reasons, the interclub competition is cancelled. So rather than being on Zoom, we will meeting in the small hall for a members’ evening.  

It’s exactly 12 years since the January 2011 issue of Cheshire Life was published, including an article about the Wilmslow Guild Photographic Society.    It’s almost entirely written by our then-chairman Gary Schultz, who said:

“The Wilmslow Photographic Society was formed in the 1930s and now has about 70 members on its books – ages range from 20-odd to 60-odd – and they have excelled in competitions locally, nationally and even internationally.

They came third overall out of almost 70 clubs in the Natural History Print Section of last year’s Lancashire and Cheshire Photographic Union Annual Competition and finished in seventh place overall.”

There are photos from Bill Salkeld, David Lewis, Kevin Lee, Claire Metcalfe, Geraldine Hillmer and Brian Smith alongside the text.

The above is a brief extract and you’ll be able to view a copy of the full article at our next meeting, at the start of January 2023.

At the very end of November we held our December monthly competition.  In this digital image competition the winning picture in the ‘Scapes category was ‘Low Tide at Aberffraw’ by Mary Dolan.

In the Open Mono category the winning picture was ‘Blackpool, a Trip Down Memory Lane’ by Pat Sawas.

Congratulations to both photographers! Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

Our next monthly competition is on 18th January so remember to submit your DPIs via Photoentry by the 11th of January.  Categories are ‘Open Colour’ and ‘Low Light’.  It should be easy to find some low light at this time of year!

On the 9th of November we held our first print competition of the year.  The winning print in the Open Colour section was ‘Iris’ by David Royle.

And the winning print in the ‘Perspective’ section was’Blown Up in a Bubble’ by Mary Dolan.

Congratulations to both photographers! Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

We are moving quickly on to our our next competition, which will also be in November this year because of the Guild calendar.

In the words of Tess Daly “the scores are in”…

…and on the 5th of October we held our first competition of the season.  DPI Open Mono + the subject ‘Water’.

Our judge chose Mary Dolan’s image ‘Tulips’ as the winning mono picture.

For “Water” the winner was John O’Brien’s ‘Yorkshire Falls

Congratulations to Mary and to John! Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

As promised, the new programme for the 2022-23 season is here.  

Click on the menu item ‘Calendar’ to view it.

Our new season will be starting in September and to quote The Two Ronnies;  have we got a packed programme for you?  

Well yes we have; and details will be here shortly, so please visit in a few days’ time to see the new 2022-23 programme.

On the 23rd of February we held our fifth competition of the season.  This was our 2nd print competition of the season and to encourage entries we removed the requirement to mount the prints.   The first half of the evening was “Open Colour” prints and the set subject in the second half was “Panoramic”.

Our judge was John Riley and he chose Michael Hilton’s image ‘Rose’ as the winning colour picture.

For “Panoramic” the winner was Gary Schultz’s ‘On the way to the North Cape’.

Congratulations to Michael and Gary! Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

On the 19th January we held our fourth competition of the season; this time it was ‘Open Monochrome’ in the 1st half and the set subject of ‘Geometry’ in the 2nd half.  Both were digital projected images.

Our judge was Chris Boyes and he selected David Royle’s image ‘Pelican’ as the winning monochrome picture.

In the ‘Geometry’ section the winner was Mary Dolan with ‘Spiral’.  Congratulations to them both!

Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

On Wednesday we held our 3rd competition of the 2021/22 season. This was a DPI (digital image) competition.  Our judge was Mike Lawrence who provided us with some excellent comments and coped with the very large number of entries.

Double congratulations to John O’Brien who won the Open Colour competition with ‘Emotion’ and also the Landscape competition with ‘In the Golden Mist’.

Full results are available on Photoentry as usual.

Well, as many of you know, I didn’t make the meeting last week thanks to “Test and Trace”.  My PCR test was negative so I could have come to the meeting but better safe than sorry, hopefully I’ll be there next week! Thanks to Michael and David (and anyone else who helped) who got the technology working so folks at home could watch. I enjoyed listening to the speaker. The link to the recording is in my weekly email.

Next week, it’s a PDI competition evening, and we have a good number of entries.

As today is Black Friday, there are many deals around. Two that have caught my eye are for software.  DXO software is 50% off, this includes the Nik collection and Affinity are giving 30% off.  Adobe have 39% off Creative Cloud.

I’ve missed most of the episodes however caught Episode 5 of “My Greatest Shot” on Sky Arts. Photographers talk about how they produced an image and you may enjoy it. It is repeated on Sunday afternoon, along with with Episode 6 .

That’s it for now, fingers crossed for Wednesday

David

Hello,

I hope you’ve all been enjoying the autumn colours and have been able to get out and about with your camera.  I’m now back from my travels and like to thank Michael and Dave for hosting previous meetings along with everyone who helped try and get the technology working. Thanks also to the speakers at last week’s meeting.

Next week’s meeting

Looking forward to the next meeting this is a talk by Steve Proctor – ‘Power & Poise’. We will be meeting in the Guild as normal and will try (once again) to share the meeting via Zoom. Let’s hope we have better luck than previous weeks.

Co-op Community Fund – Raising money for the Guild

Ali has sent the following message:

I‘m writing to tell you that The Guild has been selected as one of Co-op’s CommunitIy Fund causes in our area. Co-op membership card holders can raise funds for the Guild every time they shop and swipe their card.
It’s super important to select the Guild as your cause on the App, via their Website or by calling 0800 0686 727 (It doesn’t matter if you live in Wilmslow)
This is our cause page: Co-op (coop.co.uk)

Finally

We are still looking for volunteers to help with the IT for the meetings in the Guild. At the moment, this falls to a very select band so please volunteer to learn and help get everything ready.  We would also like more help on the general committee to share the workload.

That’s it for this week, hope to see you on Wednesday.

David

Last night held our second monthly competition of the 2021/22 season, and our first print competition for some considerable time.  

Our judge David Butler from Chorley PS provided lots of interesting and useful comments on the pictures, and the relatively low number of entries meant there was time to discuss some of the pictures too.

Congratulations to Michael Hilton for winning both the Open Monochrome section with ‘In the Countryside’, and the Minimalism section with ‘Sea Pool’.

This year we are simplifying things by not publishing all the entries on the website; members will have received emails from the Photoentry system with all the results and images.

We held our first monthly competition of the 2021/22 season last week.  Congratulations to Pat Sawas for winning the Open Colour DPI section with ‘Not your run of the mill mannequin’, and to John O’Brien for his winning entry in the Double Exposure DPI section with ‘Cracked Actor’.

This year we are simplifying things by not publishing all the entries on the website; members will have received emails from the Photoentry system with all the results and images.

You can now see the full 2021 – 2022 calendar and sync it with your phone calendar etc. if you wish.

For an overview of the year, you can also download a PDF of the printed programme.  Members can also collect a printed programme at a Wednesday meeting.

The programme for the 2021-2022 season is now available on our web site.  We have a full programme of events starting on Wednesday 15th September.  Click here to read it… The new programme…

The second section of the Annual Competition was reviewed by Terry Donnelly

In Open Mono, Pat Sawas took first place with “Alien Nation”, 2nd place was Chris Hills with “Dovercourt Lighthouse” and Adrian Hazeldine taking 3rd place  with “Parked under the street lamp”.

John Dennis took the 1st place honours with “Painted Lady”, 2nd was Mary Dolan with “Squirrel’s Bath Time  and Ian Denby was 3rd with “Early morning on the beach”.

Congratulation to all,

There was a good Zoom audience as the judge reviewed images from the Open Colour and People & Portraits sections of the Annual Competition.  One of the judges, Nick Berentzen gave feedback on behalf the three judges.

In Open Colour, David Higton took first place with his picture of “Loch Ard” with Mary Dolan taking 2nd and 3rd place with “Stormy Seas, Turner Style” and “Winter Golf”.

Michael Hilton took the 1st and 2nd place honours with “Drawn to the Light” and “Spiral Stairs, and Les Stringer’s “Reading the Sunday papers” was 3rd.

Congratulation to all, and roll on the Part 2 review evening next week, Mono and Nature

We held our 6th competition on Wednesday wtih two Parts, Mono and Windows. Congratulations to Mary and Pat for their winning entries.  The results are on the website here, the top three images from each section can be found here and the final standings in POTY are here.

Congratulations to John O’Brien for winning photographer of the year. John beat Michael Hilton by a single point at the end, it couldn’t be closer.

I’ve been updating some of the link and help on the website https://wgps.org.uk/links/links/  including a link to an Affinity Photo manual and a few Youtube videos.  If you think of other links that would be helpful, let me know and I’ll add them

We held our 5th competition on Wednesday wtih two Parts, Colour and Surrealist. Congratulations to Pat and John for their winning entries.  The results are on the website here, the top three images from each section can be found here and the current standings in POTY are here.

The competition for POTY this year is close  with two more rounds to go – who will emerge as winner? John’s lead has been cut by 2 points with Michael and Dave within touching distance – will he make it over the finish line?  It’s squeaky bum time as Fergie used to say!

Entries for Comp 6 (Open Colour & Surreal) close on 10th March with the judging on 24th March.

The next sessions have been arranged for Tuesday Feb 9th and Wednesday Feb 17th.

Hope you can join use – Zoom details will be sent nearer the time.