Northwest Fed - Round 3 and overall results: Amanda Wright Reports

On Thursday evening (December 7th) I took our last 5 printed images to the third and final round of the NWFed hosted this time by Watford.
Watford already had a comfortable 10 point lead but Pinner and ourselves were both neck and neck on 386 points each.

Our judge for the evening was the well known Micki Aston who seemed on good form, despite getting over a bad cold and we started the evening with the prints, 5 from each club, 15 in total. The standard was extremely high and her comments were mostly very fair. She started off by reminding us that as the standard was technically very good it would be down to how each image made her feel that would be the dominating factor in her scoring.

We started well with our first print out On The Ledge by Paul Mason being held back. Our second image out didn’t fare so well and I have to say on this occasion I completely disagreed with Micki’s comments on Cut Off by Annie Hackett. Micki is well known for her love of black and white photography, having started in the darkroom herself, but on this occasion she didn’t take into account the time of day that the image had been taken, describing it as ‘muddy' and wanting a greater range of tones and more brightness in the darker areas. It scored 15. Maybe next time we’ll reflect the time of day in the title and call it Cut Off At Dusk or something like that to help guide the judge. Micki didn’t seem to take the Wonderful storytelling into account at all, just the technical aspect which was very disappointing and such a shame. 

On The Ledge went on to attain a 20, well done Paul. 
Cut Off by Annie Hackett 15
Skinningrove At Dawn by Nick Barber 16 
Time For A Dip by Mike Lloyd 18 
Derelict Corn Mill by Jenny Fenton 17

Interestingly Micki disliked the colours or tones of something in all our prints apart from Paul's. In Skinngrove At Dawn it was the blue toned harbour wall - she said it should have been grey (it ’s dawn). In Time For A Dip it was the pink bikini - she insisted it should have been a natural tone to blend in with the environment and Derelict Corn Mill reminded her of a filter called Tobacco she used to use and had done to death so her low score reflected a very personal element. In short, if the colour palette or tones were not realistic for a daytime shot or something went against the norm, it was marked down.

Watford had two images held back, both scoring 20 and both were awarded the two allocated stars. Sadly we came last in the print section.

Scores at half time were

WAT 91
PIN  92
EHH 86

At this point as Pinner were winning they thought it might be a good time to leave haha!!

In the second half, the PDI’s, Micki held back 5 images, 2 from Watford and 3 from EHHPS, all of which scored 20 and 2 of ours were awarded the stars!

Emmanuel’s Homage To IT received much praise from Micki, despite confessing her fear of clowns, describing it as perfectly malevolent, she loved it. She enjoyed the simplicity and quietness of Sea Fret by Kris and Annie’s A Moment Of Peace drew a gasp of enjoyment.

Homage To IT by Emmanuel 20 and a Star
A Moment Of Peace by Annie Hackett 20 and a Star
Sea Fret by Kristin Mason 20
Watching Mother With Prey by John Alexander 16
Epitome Of Fun by Jenny Fenton 16

PDI Scores were

WAT 93
EHH 92
PIN 88

Overall Scores then after all 3 rounds

PRINTS PDI’s TOTAL
1st WAT 291 1st EHH 290 1st WAT 580
2nd PIN 281 2nd WAT 289. 2nd PIN 566
3rd EHH 274 3rd PIN 285 3rd EHH 564

A great win for us in the PDI’s even beating Watford! Such a shame we were beaten by Pinner by just 2 points but no surprises that Watford won the competition being the far bigger club and with some very talented photographers with a good range of genres to draw from.

EHHPS did do very well again with our starred images across the competition so very well done to:

Annie Hackett - Winskill Tree Print and A Moment Of Peace PDI
Dennis Durack - Eastern Eyes PDI
Mike Lloyd - An Anxious Wait PDI
Emmanuel - Homage To IT PDI

Amanda Wright