I might need to try this again when they’ve dried out. I thought moisture would be nice, but I’m not so sure now. Anyway - this is me experimenting with Helicon for focus-stacking and if anything it’s a damn sight quicker that Photoshop.
Strikes 2a/2b. Back with dry plants, and an extension tube…
… and bi-colour processing.
As usual - Completely unable to decide between mono and colour.
Quite pleased with my results from the Serial Print 2023-2024 Round 3 last night.
I think that is the final round and, if so, the leaderboard reports that I have come joint 9th from 21 in the Mono and joint 6th from 23 in the Colour. I’m happy with that given the troublingly high quality of the Cambridge club.
Sidenote - this colour image has been marked down by two separate judges for being a) too bright, and b) too dark.
Spent most of today on a fixed 100mm macro, which served surprisingly well. It seemed to be the right focal length for natural-looking people shots, without being right up in their face. The long-exposure couple were both on my 15-35mm as I was experimenting with my ND10,000 (!) filter. It turns out that you do not really need fifteen minute exposures for anything, but it is great at removing people. You can’t really tell but Westminster Bridge was heaving for its whole length, but the exposure removed nearly everyone.
Judge: Jim Bennett
Jim, because he’s nice, but also because he has taste obviously, held back all of my entries tonight, which is cool.
None of them bloody won, mind.
Came first in the Royston Photographic Society Knockout competition last night! (Pair-wise elimination, last-man-standing, with 90 images.)
I’m still totally in the dark as to how a grand-slam works with 90 images. Some don’t appear until round two. Some perhaps until round three. Some rounds have an odd number of entries. It’s all mysterious.
Results for the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain Open PDI Cup 2024.
Results for the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain Nature cup.
Hmm. The spiders was my best shot, so I’m pleased that is reflected in the scores. I’m not used to scores out of fifteen though, so nine really smarts!
Results from the Photographic Alliance of Great Britain 2024 Trophy
Three judges score each image out of five and the total is the score.
This image, blurred, duplicated, layer-flipped, layer opacity 50%, sharpened, texture-increased, desaturated, and vignetted. Improved.
More ICM vegetation in the custom dark box taking up my desk. A bamboo stalk with just a couple of leaves on. Less really is more with this approach. If there’s more than a couple of leaves or branches, the motion exponentially clutters the image.
Judge: Pauline Martindale
Unexpectedly scored 19/20 for this heron.
Kitten scored 16/20, which was expected!
The scoring was properly weird. I’m surprised there’s not been more comment about it on the club forums because it genuinely appeared that the judge had brought the wrong glasses - misdescribing fundamental elements of the images. There was also a strange obsession with verticals (even for elements that were not vertical in the first place such as V-shaped architectural butressing) and leg-separation (even for face-forward animals on which separation would have looked absurd and been compositionally jarring.)
Judge was viewing them for the first time on the night and that appeared to put the pressure on her.
I’m not saying my images were worth much - I chucked them in fairly thoughtlessly - but the commentary and scoring were both baffling.
Judge: Jim Bennett. Left to right:
Airbrush Nothing | (Theme: “Natural Beauty”) | 17/20
Fastbowl | (Theme: “Speed”) | 16/20
Hammered | (Theme: “Reflection”) | 16/20
With Condiments | (Theme: “Contrasts”) | 20/20
Salad Days | (Theme: “What’s In My Shopping Basket”) | 18/20
Experiment to use over-sharpening for a palette-knife / oil-paint effect. I guess whether or not you parse it as painterly or oafish use of Topaz depends on your photographic experience…!
