Cambridge Camera Club runs several competitions during the year and they’re mostly won by expert photographers. They’re not just technically expert and skilled at using Photoshop etc they’re also expert on their chosen genre and have the patience that’s needed with it. I maybe OK on the first two but fall down on the last. I am not an expert in any particular genre and I certainly don’t have the often required patience.
But last Monday I was judged to have won a recent competition viz Points of View. It’s a competition which requires entrants to deliver five images of five subjects all taken on the day in a specified location. They are then judged by the winner of the previous year’s competition who also chose the location and subjects for this year’s event.
So how did I win? Well it helped that the judge was not a ‘qualified’ judge and it appears that my images chimed with the sort which he likes to see but really it was the nature of the event which made it possible and that meant two reasons:
- it didn’t require genre expertise and the patience which goes with it. You have to get out there are take photographs, frame and expose them right and move on. It’s how I take photographs.
- it required photographs to be taken on the day. There was no point in having an expertly curated back catalogue. You have to take photographs, and they had to be good ones, on the day.
The images are scored out of 20 so with five the maximum is 100. In previous years you needed 90 or more to win. I reckon I had three which would score highly and two of which I was less confident. I thought I’d get 87 or so. As it was one of my weaker shots got a 19 and my other one scored 16 giving me a total score of 92. I even scored one 20 (see the featured image above). I won by three!
You can see my five images, the subjects and their scores below
The River: Cambridge is named after its famous river. Images for this round should include the river, its banks or its bridges. This scored 19.
Visitors: Cambridge is very popular with tourists and images in this round should include one or more of them. The numbers will have fallen back a bit from the summer crowds, but there should still be some around. This scored 20!
The Cambridge the tourists come to see: Images in this round should be of the things the tourists come to see eg ancient buildings, quaint streets and alley ways, bicycles, possibly some evidence of the academic life etc. This scored 18.
The Cambridge the tourists tend not to see: Most tourists don’t stray far from the Centre of town with its colleges and the river (to the left of the red dashed line on the magnified view of the city centre shown on the map), so images would be best taken from outside this area. This scored 19.
New Cambridge: Cambridge has grown dramatically in recent years and this has resulted in some striking new architecture. Images in this round must be in mono and be of the exteriors of modern buildings (or significant expansions) which have been erected since the end of WW2. This scored a mere 16.
I spent the whole day walking Cambridge, Fitbit records me as having taken about 26,500 steps and took about 170 photographs a handful of which were with my mobile. Most significant though the rest were all taken with by Sony RX100vii pocket camera and not with my DSLR.
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