It’s nice to be recognised

I wasn’t sure what I would get when I joined the Cambridge Camera Club eighteen months ago. I was perhaps surprised that bird and insect photographs seemed to dominate the top positions in competitions, that most of the focus seemed to be on setting up and post -processing and that there was a world of qualifications which people collected and seemed proud of displaying.

There was no way that I was going to be able to match the incredible bird and insect photographs so I didn’t worry about that and simply got on with taking the sort of photographs that I’ve always done and to doing my best to make them good examples of their genre.

I was rewarded in that respect by this image scoring a 20 in a recent competition! I’m nore sure if it’s really one of my best, it’s just a well shot image with good colours, it’s in focus and it fills the frame.

I also realised that there are basically two kinds of photographer: those that go to places to take photographs, whether that be in a studio or on some specific location, and those who go to places and take photographs. I’m of the latter and I do my best to take good photographs ‘in camera’ and to not depend on extensive post processing.

It’s not quite true of course. I did go out to take pictures for the Club’s POV competition when this image also scored a 20.

And finally I thought maybe I can get a qualification without ‘compromising’ my style. So I took advice, I quickly found that the Club was full of people willing to give advice, you just had to ask, and set about compiling a set of ten photographs which would, if they collectively met criteria of quality, creativity, diversity and, as a set, coherence, would earn me the award of a Licentiate of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS)

I put together my first set of ten in Apr 25 and took them along to the Club’s Critique SIG where just three of my images were deemed to be up to scratch. I changed the mix and came up with a second set which I reviewed with the RPS in July. Four survived that exercise but the experience left me with a good idea of how I might move forward. After my second RPS review I had nine photographs which were good to go and after changing the tenth I submitted my application in December. Last week I was advised that my application had been successful and that I could now declare myself an LRPS!

The ten photographs in my submission are included in the gallery below.