Tag Archives: L&CPU

Annual Print Competition, 27th March 2024.

The club’s 23-24 season is drawing to a close and that means it’s time for the annual competitions.

Wednesday saw the Annual Print Competition, judged by club friends Sheila and Daryl Giles from Lytham St Annes Photographic Society, which is one of the biggest clubs in the North West.

Print nights are always well attended and for the Annual Competition members enjoyed images in Open Colour, Open Monochrome, Nature, People and Portraits and The Cumbria Panel Competition.

Shelia and Daryl had a previous sight of the images for consideration before the judging on the evening. As always it was an entertaining evening in which members could enjoy the images and listen to the judges’ comments on the images presented.

The Colour section was judged first by Daryl and the winning image on the night and the Trophy winner was ‘Enchanted Lake’ by Laurie Thurlow.

Also held in the final selection were ‘Piper’ and ‘Old Boat’ by Laurie Thurlow, ‘Steam at Garsdale’ and ‘Harbour Sunset’ by Ann Dallaway and ‘Redwoods ICM’ by Bill Pickard.

The Monochrome section was judged by Sheila.

Images held were ‘Red Stag’ by David Poole, ‘A Balanced Performance’ by Gavin Lowe, ‘Sheep Under a Tree’ by Russell Millner . The winner was ‘The Cob, Lyme Regis ICM’ meaning this year’s Monochrome Trophy goes to Bill Pickard.

After the coffee break Sheila and Daryl judged the Cumbrian Panel Competition together. For this competition members present three images that complement each other on a subject or theme. It is important that when viewed together the images are cohesive.

For the Cumbrian Panel Competition all the images must have been taken within Cumbria and are about the Cumbria Landscape, Wildlife or Cumbrian traditions and life.

In first place was ‘Weird Trees’ by Laurie Thurlow, with Jeff Bagnall’s image ‘Buttermere High” achieving 19 out of 20 points and Maureen Smith’s image ‘Cumbria Red Squirrels’ achieving 18.

Sheila next judged the Nature section. The Trophy went to ‘Little Egret Feeding’ by Gordon Mills which Sheila wished was an image she had taken herself.

Also in the final selection of leading images was ‘Squabbling Chaffinches’ by Gordon Mills, ‘Sparrowhawk on Pidgeon’ and ‘Aggressive Buzzard’ both by David Poole and ‘Purple Heron’ by Peter Kennedy.

Daryl judged the final and smallest section of the evening which was People and Portraits.

Three images were held back with ‘Playing the Blues’ achieving the win and trophy for Maureen Smith. ‘Waiting’ by Jeff Bagnall and ‘The Engineer’ by Maureen Smith were also considered in the final selection.

The club would like to thank Sheila and Daryl for their considered comments and advice about the members’ images. We look forward to seeing them again in the future.

The Full Score Sheets are in the member’s section of the website.

Next week is the the Annual PDI Competition, which is available on Zoom and at Castle Street. Visitors, as always, are welcome to come along and meet members, so please join us especially if you are considering joining the club when the next 24-25 season starts in September 2024.

To come as a guest please click on the link https://kendalphotographyclub.co.uk/about/membership/guest/

PDI Competition Night – Curves

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Wednesday January 24th 2024 saw the fourth PDI competition of the club season. The competition theme ‘Curves’ was an interesting challenge, but as always members presented a varied selection of images.

The judge for the competition was Erica Oram, CPAGB AFIAP BPE3 of Sheffield Photographic Club. Erica gave great critiques of the entries with advice on how to improve images. Members appreciated her advice and hope to welcome her back to the club in the future.

In the Monochrome section members submitted 38 images. The winner on the evening was ‘Staircase’ by Phil Drayton with 20 points.

Maureen Smith also achieved 20 points with her image ‘Shell’ for 2nd place. In third place with 19 points was Bill Pickard with his image ‘Spiral’.

After the coffee break Erica judged 38 images in the Colour section. In first place was Ann Dallaway with ‘Going up’.

Gavin Lowe also achieved 20 points with ‘Round and Round’.

Maureen Smith and Dave Nelson both achieved 19 points for ‘Looking Down’ and ‘Red Arrows-Tornado’.

The full scores for the competition are in the members section of the website. This week all images have been added to the members protected section at thumbnail size (800×600). Members can review the images at their leisure if they wish. Feedback to Maureen on this method of sharing of images would be appreciated.

Next week is Editing night available on Zoom and at Hall and as always visitors welcome.

Members Prints Competition Results 22/23

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The final prints competition of the 22/23 season was held on February 8th. The competition was Judged by Phil Hodgson of Poulton le Fylde Club. Phil gave us an entertaining evening and some wonderful images were presented by members for judging.

In the Colour Club Competition Karen Caruthers was leading the seasons league table going into the final competition. Karen finished the season with a winning image ‘Sunlit Fungi’.

Karen finished the season as overall winner in the Club Colour Competition having achieved 3 wins this season with ‘Splash of Red at Glenridding’, ‘Winter Sunshine Tarn Hows’ and ‘Sunlit Fungi’ achieving a total of 108 points.

In the Club Mono Competition the nights winning image was ‘Fisherman’s Huts Lindisfarne’ by Martin Rowe.

This win took Martin into joint 1st place in the season’s results. with Martin having had a previous print win with ‘Mining Museum Roof Detail’. Karen Carruthers shared overall first place with both members finishing on 104 points.

Moving onto the Advanced Mono there were 6 images which received a maximum 20 points on the night.

Dave Nelson achieved a maximum 40 points for his abstract images ‘Drought’ and ‘Frozen in Time’. Laurie Thurlow also achieved 40 points for his images ‘Scout Scar’ and ‘Rydal Lonely Tree’. ‘Scout Scar’ was given the overall winning place in the nights competition.

Also achieving 20 points were Maureen Smith for ‘The Look’ and Peter Kennedy for ‘Southport Pier’

First place in the season’s Advanced Mono Competition was closely fought but finally the win went to Peter Kennedy by 1 point (total 108) with Maureen Smith 2nd place (107) and Kim Rigg 3rd place (105).

Finally, we come to the Advanced Colour Competition which had 5 full point images on the night. Laurie Thurlow with ‘Ullswater Expanse’, ‘The Famous Boswell’ by Russell Millner’, Bill Pickard with ‘Break in The Ice’ , ‘The Famous Boswell’ by Russell Millner’, ‘Night Heron Skimming’ by Peter Kennedy and ‘Winter Scene’ by Jeff Bagnell.

The win on the night was given to Laurie Thurlow for ‘Ullswater Expanse’.

Laurie has presented stunning images this season and took the overall 1st place with 112 points. 2nd place went to Peter Kennedy (108) and 3rd place to Maureen Smith (102).

Full competition results are in the members area of the website.

Thank you to all members who entered the print competitions this year. Your images are always appreciated and enjoyed by the membership and we hope you had fun. Keep entering your images next year.

Next week is a talk by Warren Alani called ‘Through the Years’ available on Zoom or at the Hall. Visitors always welcome see the membership page for details.

Kendal v Morecambe Annual Photo Battle 2023

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This year the battle was held at Morecambe Camera Club. Thirteen Kendal members made the journey to Heysham Library for the event.

Each club submitted 30 images divided into 3 categories Open Colour, Open Mono and Nature. The competition was expertly judged by David Gibbins of Beeston Camera Club.

First Round was Open Mono and was a close competition, with three images for Morecambe and three images for Kendal held into the final judging. Both clubs achieved an 18 ,19 and 20. Kendal’s winning images are below.

Egg Heads 20
Airborne Attack 19
Lake Manyara 18

The total scores in the Mono round placed Morecambe in the lead with 168 points to Kendal and 172 to Morecambe.

The Second Round to be judged was Nature. David had a very difficult task as the standard of the images was outstanding. This was reflected in 10 images being held to final judging with five from Kendal and five from Morecambe.

Kendal’s Leading images were:

Dalmatian Pelican and Fish 20
Arctic Dreams 19
Brown Pelican 19
Barn Owl 18
Dalmatian Pelicans Feeding 18

The round was extremely close with the Kendal achieving 178 points to Morecambe’s 173.

After a well organised coffee and tea break with good biscuits and a raffle, it was the final deciding Colour Round.

The standard of images was again very high with David holding 7 Images into the final judging. Kendal was doing well with 6 of the 7 images held and it was all looking very good for a possible overall win.

Kendal’s images achieved;

Wintering 20
By dawn’s early light 19
The Horse Box 19
Hot Dog 18
Trees framed 18
Rocky staircase 18

These strong images gave Kendal a Colour Round score of 176 points to Morecambe’s 163 .

The overall win went to Kendal with a total score of 522 to 508.

A big thank you goes to David Gibbins for his time in providing considered comments on the images and for judging the competition. A thank you also to Morecambe Camera Club for their warm welcome and hospitality.

Morecambe Club have also provided a link to a zoom video of the evening which can be accessed for a week. The link is in the members area of the website along with the full score sheets for the event.

Thanks to all members who attended Morecambe, it was a very enjoyable evening.

Next week it is the final Club Open Print Competition of the season. This will NOT be zoomed and members are asked to bring their prints on the night to the hall. The Judge is Phil Hodson of Poulton le Fylde.

Members are also reminded that entries for the next and Final PDI competition of the 22-23 season are due in by Wednesday to Dave .

Repairing Old Photographs with Photoshop

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November 23rd saw a return visit to the club of Richard O’Brien. Richard previously shared a zoom presentation earlier in the season on architectural photography.

Richard’s return visit provided an informative evening on repairing and recolouring photograph.

Richard demonstrated how he repairs old family photographs using tools within photoshop. The techniques used and the tips provided will be equally relevant to many photograph editing situations.

Richard’s clear communication style and wealth of photoshop knowledge was appreciated by members.

Richard has again provided pdf notes of his talk, which I am sure members will return to as they try out some of the techniques demonstrated. The pdf is available in the Members Protected Area of the website.

Richard’s work can be seen on his website http://www.richobphoto.co.uk/.

Once again, a big ‘thank you’ goes to Richard for an informative and enjoyable evening and hopefully we will see another return visit in the future.

Competition Time

Next week is a print competition. (Not available on Zoom).

Please bring your mounted print images on the night. Two colour and two mono images will be judged by Harry Emmett CPAGB.

PDI images on the ‘Sports’ theme need to be with the PDI Competition Secretary by Wednesday 23rd November.

An Evening of Audio Visual Sequences

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On Wednesday night we were treated to our first talk of the year from an old friend of the club, Dave Bibby, CPAGB, EFIAP, BPE3* of North Fylde Club.

Parking and technological issues were an early feature of the evening but once these were overcome we had an enjoyable and interesting talk.

Dave guided us though his interest in audio visual production from his early use of slide projectors in the days before digital photography to the use of modern software.

Dave shared how he creates his audio visual productions. We had the pleasure of enjoying Dave’s images and his interest in a variety of musical genres which accompany his audio visual sequences.

A big thank you to Dave for a very enjoyable evening.

Next week we have a talk by Richard O’Brien entitled “Exposure to Edit”.

New members are always welcome in person or via zoom. Check out the website membership page if you are interested in attending.

Competition: L&CPU Annual Knockout 2021

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Each year, our Federation which is the Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Union (L&CPU) hold a Knockout competition. Up to 8 images from each Club can be entered, though usually only 4 are used by the Federation due to the high numbers of images sent in, so as a Club we have to decide which of our 8 images should be shown as the first 4. These 4 images can be on any subject but must be by 4 different authors. The images are then either kept in or knocked out during several rounds of judging, culminating in the final round of highest scoring pictures.

On Saturday 13th November 2021, Kendal took part in the Knockout for only the second time and I am beyond thrilled to say that we came joint 2nd out of 42 Clubs 😮 and double 😮. Congratulations to Jo Knight, whose image ‘Queen Bee’ made it to the final judging round.

Below are the 4 images which were used by our Club. Seamus Bryans’ ‘Batman’, Jo Knight’s ‘Queen Bee’, Jeff Bagnall’s ‘Bir Hakeim Bridge’ and Russell Millner’s ‘Polar bear at sunset’.

We would also like to thank Dylan Reynolds, Maureen Smith and Gordon Mills whose excellent images were part of the Club selection but unfortunately not used by the Federation in the competition due to the volume of images received.

There are some superb and very successful Clubs within the L&CPU federation and it’s a huge achievement to have come 2nd out of 42 Clubs in this regional competition on only our second entry. Massive congratulations to the authors of the entered images! I’m off to celebrate with a brew and a Twix 😁.

Competitions: Novice Cup & Oldham Mono

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Kendal Photography Club is part of the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain (PAGB), which has over 40,000 individual members all over the UK. PAGB affiliated Camera Clubs are grouped into regional Federations and Kendal PC falls under the Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Union (L&CPU) which is one of the most successful Federations in the country.

Every year, the L&CPU hold competitions for individual camera club members in their region with images chosen by the author, and also for Clubs as a whole with images chosen by each Club’s committee usually from those which have done well in that season’s Club competitions.

It’s a huge honour to have an image picked to represent your Club at Federation level and if an image does well in a Federation competition it can be used in that Federation’s portfolio, used in inter-Federation competitions against other regions, used to represent the Federation in nation-wide PAGB competitions, or even to represent your country in global competitions such as the FIAP world cup. It’s a great way to get your name known by your Federation or even the PAGB and gives kudos to your Club.

Last year, Club member Russell Millner was awarded gold with his Bears on Baffin on his very first entry into the L&CPU Novice Cup, which is a Federation print competition designed for members without any photographic qualifications or distinctions, and goes to show that our Club members have as much chance of success as anyone else in our region.

It was, therefore, disappointing to see the low number of entries from our Club in the 2021 annual Novice Cup. We could have entered 12 images but we only had 10 entries, which meant that our combined score was low compared to the other Clubs who had all submitted the maximum amount of photographs.

A big “thank you” to Kim Rigg, Liz Bagnall, Phil Drayton, Ann Dallaway and Heather Mallinson who made the effort to enter and a selection of whose images are below, and to club Secretary Maureen Smith who helped with the printing of the entries.

Oldham Mono

Each year, Oldham Camera Club invite all the clubs in the L&CPU Federation to enter a monochrome competition, which is usually a print competition but this year changed to PDI and held via Zoom due to the ongoing Covid pandemic.

Judges who visit our club often comment on the strength of our monochrome pictures and again it was disappointing that there weren’t more entries from Club members, so our thanks go to Russell Millner, Derek Mackie, Maureen Smith, Jeff Bagnall, Gordon Bramwell and Peter Kennedy for taking the time to submit images, a selection of which are below:

We did well as a Club in last year’s Federation competitions coming mid way down the leader board despite our region containing some of the most successful Clubs in the country, so although we’re small we have the potential to pack a punch and I hope that next year we see more members submitting entries into Federation competitions and helping the Club to succeed.

Competition: L&CPU club knockout

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Having had individual success in the Federation annual competition during the summer, our Club decided for the first time to enter the L&CPU Club Knockout competition which was held via Zoom on Saturday 21st November.

The rules requested we send in 8 images, although only the first 7 would be used in the competition, the 8th image being held back in the case of a tie break. We had to send the images in the order we wished them to be shown, and the first 4 pictures had to be from 4 different authors although up to two images per author were allowed.

At the start of the event, all images were shown on screen before judging began and we noticed that 3 of our entries were missing. Our External Competitions Secretary queried this and we were told that as 160 images had been received for the competition only 4 per club would be shown. Apparently, the rules state that “the number of images used in the competition will depend on the number of clubs entered”, although as a club we had no clue how many other clubs had entered or that there was a 160 image cap. So we had some very disappointed photographers who had gone to the effort of sending in their images only for them not to be used 🙁.

Of the four images used in the competition, three were thrown out in the first round. However, Jeff Bagnall’s ‘Broken Politics’ saved the day getting through to the final round of 11 images which is a fantastic achievement considering the high standard and number of entries. The judge, Mike Sharples of Smethwick PS, was clearly impressed with Jeff’s photograph and it was solely down to his image that Kendal ended up in joint 8th place overall out of 41 clubs.

I think it’s fair to say that our first forage into the Federation Club knockout was a learning curve in terms of how the event is run, but we’ll know for next year. Big congratulations, however, to Jeff on his very well deserved success and for representing the club 🙂.

L&CPU Annual Novice Cup

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Judging for the 2020 L&CPU Interim Annual Novice Cup took place via zoom on Sunday 11th October. It is difficult to define what is a novice photographer, but it is generally considered as somebody who hasn’t competed in a lot of national/international competitions, who doesn’t hold photographic distinctions, or who hasn’t been in a club very long. Many of our members qualify as a novice and I’m delighted to say that several took courage in both hands and entered this regional Federation competition.

There were two sections, open and nature, with each photographer allowed to enter up to 4 images in each section. The Novice Cup is traditionally a Club competition and usually 6-8 images per Club are allowed to be entered, however due to Covid the rules for this year were changed and individuals entered under their own steam although there was still a Club award for both sections.

The nature section was judged first from 10.30am-12.30am and the standard for a novice competition was exceptionally high. I am therefore absolutely thrilled that the Gold medal for best nature PDI went to club member Russell Millner for his image depicting a ‘Family of Bears on Baffin’ 😃. The accolades didn’t stop there, either, as Russell was also awarded a Commended for his image ‘Polar Bear Resting’. Big congratulations to Russell on his success!

Judging for the open section began at 1.30pm and finished at 3.30pm. To those of us watching, the scoring seemed a little lower than in the nature section despite some really strong images so we were thrilled when club member Maureen Smith was Commended for her photograph of the ‘Imperial War Museum, Salford’. This is Maureen’s second award in L&CPU annual competitions this year and a great achievement on her first entry into Federation events 😀.

Everyone who entered the competition should be receiving their scores directly from the L&CPU shortly.

As I mentioned earlier, this is traditionally a Club competition and Kendal PC came 5th overall which is brilliant! Well done to all the members who entered and helped the Club achieve such a great result 😊.

We are a talented Club and I hope members’ successes this year will inspire others to have a go at regional and national competitions and to dip their toe in the water of International Salons, such as those run by FIAP, the PSA and BPE. More details can be found on how to enter salons in the Members’ section of our website.