As the club season draws to a close, members of the Dawlish & Teignmouth Photography Club welcomed back Judge, Kay Wilson, for their final competition – Image of the Year.
Kay had the difficult task of making her choices from a particularly high calibre of images and she admitted that she would have liked to have given more awards, but had to stick to the rules of the competition.
There was an array of subject matter, from high-octane action shots to dreamy waterscapes and highly detailed wildlife studies to abstract images using light and shade to create patterns, but Kay settled on three very different images for the prestigious top award.
The first of the Colour images to achieve Gold was by Kevin McDonagh for his magical woodland scene, Fungal Lamps. Kevin had been out walking in Bovey Woods when he noticed a little group of fungi on a tree branch suspended at eye-level. He knew at once that this would make an interesting composition and could imagine how they would look when illuminated.
“I made sure I had the right composition using a Canon camera and a 100mm macro lens and lit each toadstool using a hand torch. When I got home, I began the creative job of editing the individually shot images using Lightroom and Photoshop and then combined them to give the final image. I was delighted to receive a Gold award for Fungal Lamps and this image will be shown as part of my photographic exhibition at RHS Rosemoor in 2023” Kevin said.
Graham Eteson was equally delighted with his Gold award for his superbly-detailed and beautifully-lit image of a dragonfly.
“The photo was taken around mid-morning at the end of June last year when I visited Bystock Pools, near Exmouth” explained Graham. “I used my Canon EOS M6 MkII camera with a 55-200mm lens and chose F-stop 6.3 and a shutter speed of 1/320 second.”
In the Monochrome category, Rob Landberger received a Gold award for his dramatic image Teignmouth Pier Perspectives.
“This image was taken in January and I was using a Canon 5D IV camera and a 24-105mm lens at F11 and 50mm focal length, together with a 10-stop neutral density (ND) filter allowing an exposure of 20 seconds. The ND filter slows down the movement of the sea and give it a "milky" effect, and if there is any movement of cloud in the sky, the filter will stretch out that movement as well, so it provided an unexpected bonus of picking out some cloud above, which fortunately mirrors the dark reflections below the pier. The end of the pier aligns pretty well with the sea on the horizon, and so it all tied in together, with the eye being led along the length of pier to the sea, from right to left.”
Rob enthused “This is my first Gold Award with Dawlish & Teignmouth Photography Club, and hopefully it won't be the last! It was a lovely way to end the 2021/22 season”.
The winners for the Colour Images:
Gold – Kevin McDonagh, Graham Eteson
Silver – Debbie Ironside-Smith, Alex Rosen
Bronze – Robert Kent, Alex Rosen
Highly Commended – Kim Goodman, Elaine Smerdon, Bob Normand
The winners for the Monochrome Images:
Gold – Rob Landberger
Silver – Tejas Earp, Phil Warriner, Ken Holland
Bronze – Bobbie Smith
Highly Commended – Elaine Smerdon