Newsletter 2013

Newsletter Year 2013

Christmas Meal at the Devoncourt

Great Meal, Great Evening.....................Yes EPG had their Christmas Meal on Friday 20 December at the Devoncourt Hotel, Exmouth and the hotel did us proud. The food was excellent, lots of congeniality and speaking for myself one of our best group meals.. In fact Mo has provisionally booked the 19 December next year for our Christmas 2014 meal, only 52 weeks to go!!!!! Please click on the image below to see the images John managed to take. If you would like a copy of any of the images John has uploaded all of them to the EPG Dropbox. Enjoy.

Christmas Quiz Night, Panels and North Devon

Our last evening at the Judith Telfer Centre before Christmas was very lively and interesting. Steve Currie again did a Quiz and we were divided into teams of three, again lots of unusual questions on photography which stumped quite a few of us but the team who won were Tony, Caroline and Mark. Steve kindly donated ten 50 x 40 cut mounts to each of them so well worth going along and taking part. Well done to the winning team.

We then had a display of RPS Licentiateship Panels from Steve Currie, Derrick Holliday and a proposed one from John Wickett. We all felt that Steve and Derrick were worthy applicants for the LRPS. a good variety of work. Derrick said that the RPS retained his panel as a good example of an 'L', one that will be used to show at Distinction Days. John's panel has been to an Advisory Day and they suggested he submitted it for a Distinction, this he is going to do next April, lets hope he gets it, he should..

The evening ended with an Audio Visual of images that were taken on an outing to North Wales in October. Mo had arranged a self catering property which turned out to be a converted Chapel in Penisarwaun, near Llanberis, an excellent choice. There were 9 of us on the trip and as the presentation showed, we got a very good collection of images between us.

Thank you Club Members for taking part in the Quiz, Mo for instigating the AV and especially Steve for doing the Quiz and presenting a prize.

South Devon League Print Battle

We had our Annual Print Battle between Newton Abbot, Dawlish & Teignmouth and Crediton on the 22 November. This was very ably judged by Penny Piddock who went through 60 prints and gave very encouraging comments on all the prints. Our 15 prints were produced by Carol Hyett, Sheila Haycox, John Perriam, Jenny Baker, Caroline Ovens, Steve Currie, Derrick Holliday and John Wickett, so a very good representation from our members. Penny had a tough decision to make, in fact she did mark them with a slight difference because she had come up with more than the normal number of prints to gain 17 points.

It was a good choice as far as we were concerned, the Club gained 235 points in total with Newton Abbot coming up close with 227, Dawlish and Teignmouth with 215 and Crediton's total was 203. We were lucky enough to have two prints in the final three; Jenny was second with her Sheep Arriving and John Perriam was 3rd with his Time Walk. Well done to you both and I have put below a copy of their images.

North Wales Trip by members of Exmouth Photo Group

Recently a few of us went on a trip to North Wales, organised by Mo. The accommodation Mo managed to find was excellent, an old chapel converted to self catering accommodation. Please have a look at this link for more details on Capel Y Waun, Penisarwaun, Caernarfon. As you can imagine a number of jokes were made about the village's name!!!! We all had a fantastic time, the weather was reasonably kind to most of us but somehow or other a few of the party managed to get wet and a few of us avoided the rain. I am sure you will be seeing loads of images from us all. I would add a few members had nicknames by the end of the week, John was known as "Walk on Water", Mo as "Miss Wrong Trousers", Tony as "Firestarter" and I was known as "Mrs Sunshine". Don't ask!!!! it was all a lot of fun. Thought you might like to see our happy party..........

Christine, Jenny, Caroline, Mo, Maurice, John, Tony, Derrick, Sheila

Summer Photo Trail Challenge

This summer’s Photo Trail Challenge took place at the 40th Historic Vehicle Gathering held at Powderham Castle. Last year the event was cancelled because of the appalling weather conditions. This year, however we were more likely to get sun burnt as the weather was gorgeous and 17 Club members accepted the challenge.

Last Friday was our chance to showcase our efforts. Derrick (Holliday), who couldn’t make it to Powderham agreed to be our judge - although I think his challenge was even greater as he had 260 images to look at. Derrick scored each image out of 10 and this mark was added to the ‘on the night’ vote from Club members to get the final scores.

Top scores were:

Set 1: 1st John Perriam (157 pts), 2nd Christine Chittock (143 pts) and =3rd Steve Currie and Mo Martin (121 pts)
Set 2: 1st Christine Chittock (87 pts), 2nd John Perriam (69 pts) and =3rd Ernie King and Tony Ovens (50 pts)
The highest scoring image was Tony Oven’s Close Up shot and Derrick voted John Perriam’s Wildcard as his favourite image.
We had a great day at Powderham and a fun evening. Congratulations to the winners and a thank you to everyone who took part.

Summer Season News:

I don't think anyone can deny it, we have had a good summer and once again Martyn has fulfilled his role in producing a good Summer Programme. We have had occasions when there haven't been many but on lots of occasions we have had a large number taking part. I don't think I have had a bad meal at any of the chosen pubs so another plus point. I do hope a few of you have got some images from our strolls, I certainly have. Our last evening, which was in Exmouth, went out with a bang, well perhaps not a bang, but it seemed like it, whilst we were eating in The Grove we saw quite a bit of lightening. We were fortunate though, no rain on the walk, it was just chillier than we had been used to.

We have had a pre winter season Committee Meeting which gave the opportunity to welcome our two new Committee Members Caroline and Mark. Several things to discuss one of which was the Winter Programme which I hope you will enjoy. We, the Committee would like any feedbacki on the programme, we are here for you the members, I think Gill has again done a good job on producing a varied programme. We will be issuing a Questionnaire to all members in order to gain an insight into members feelings. The Committee have had feedback on the two Focus Groups that have been set up, Print Group and the B4&After Group, they seem to be doing well. The Committee once again will be providing two images each to go into the Modified Images Folder on the Club's laptop. These will be ready for any member to retrieve and then work on as you wish ready for the Modified Images evening on the 21st March.

Just to mention, the club does have a Colour Munki which can be hired for £5 which can be used as many times as you wish for one year, also a Matt Cutter for you to do your own mounting.

Hope to see you all back for the Winter Programme, the first week being the International Exchange and the following week we have Peter Paterson FRPS, MPAGB, all the way from Scotland, I I have known Peter for a number of years, seen some of his work and watched his progression into the top ranks of the photography world, so we should be in for a good evening, please make him welcome to our part of the country by coming along. He is doing a short club tour in this area visiting Plymouth and Dorchester.

Royal West of England Academy Event:

As some of you may know Reece Winstone was a past President of WCPF, his son John has inherited some 36,000 images. These form the basis of an Exhibition at the Royal West of England Academy from 7 September to 13 November 2013. "Bristol & Somerset: Vanishing Lives". As a few of you may be aware, members still compete for the magnificent bronze Reece Winstone Trophy (can hardly lift it!!) for best Mono print in the WCPF Members Exhibition. There is a Press Release of this Exhibition and if you click here it will open it in a PDF Document.

Devon Clubs' Print and Digitally Projected Battle

This year the Battle was hosted by Kingsbridge Camera Club and held at Rattery Village Hall, which was an excellent venue with plenty of space and car parking. We set up our Print Panel called Livestock Market in the morning and there were 12 other print panels on display from various clubs around the area. I have taken a quick shot of each panel to give you some idea of the different type of entries there were. Sorry about quality, lighting poor and no tripod but it will give you some idea of the variety. Sorry, can't put club's names to all of them as I am not sure who they belong to. I felt this year we were up against some good panels, quite a lot of thought and work had gone into some of them.

The judge was Tony Byram who I thought did a good job, he was well aware of a good panel and felt that as it was a panel competition (prints only) this aspect should be considered. He felt the panel should have a theme, hang together well and have a good presentation. Some comments made, "I feel this print is a bit weak and doesn't fit the rest of the panel", "the flow of this panel is good". With the digital images he was given all of them as one set of images, not in sets of five. Each image was then given a mark and the organisers then added up the marks to see which club had the most.

Tophies were given to the Best Panel, Best Digital Set, Best Overall Print Winner and Best Overall Digital Image. Certificates were given to 2nd and 3rd places in the same sections. We unfortunately was not placed in the Print Panels although Tony did speak highly about it.

The Print Panel Winner was Paignton Photographic Club with their panel called Water Birds. 2nd place went to Plymouth Camera Club with their panel called Pastel Blooms and third place to Ivybridge & District Camera Club with their panel called Spheres of Influence.

Places for the Digitally Projected Images were: Plymouth Camera Club 1st; Kingsbridge, Paignton and Newton Abbot joint 2nd; we were next on the list with two other clubs so in effect jopint 5th.

We did get some successes though. John Perriam's print called The Bid got 3rd place and Dave McHutchison's digital image called Ganet Returning to Its Mate got 1st place plus a trophy. I have emailed a photo of the trophy to Dave. He is so pleased and his comment was "Wow, I did not expect that! So gannets can still cut the mustard, eh?".

Ivybvridge have taken on the task of hosting next year's Battle but we are not sure who will host it the following year. Click here for more info on Battle

Presentations at WCPF Members Exhibition

What a day..............., it started with the Accepted Digitally Projected images, members were able to see all the accepted images on a large screen and as I mentioned in a previous news item we had members with acceptances in this category, John Perriam, Steve Currie and Sheila Haycox. After a spot of lunch and a look round Buckfast Abbey we all congregated in the Medieval Hall where the accepted prints are displayed. The presentations started at 2 pm starting with the Highly Commended Certificates then on to the Ribbons which were the judges preferred choices and finally the bronze, silver and gold medals and trophies. Again Exmouth Members got print acceptances namely Derrick Holliday, John Perriam, Sheila Haycox and of course our Gold Medal Winner John Wickett. Well done to all of you.

It was rather crowed in the room and the lighting was very dark, very difficult to take photos of the presentations but I have put below the Certificate Winners plus John's big moment. Managed to get a picture of John beside his print.

The Print Exhibition is open until the 26th May and is well worth a visit, the projected images are also there to view. Parking is free at Buckfast Abbey, take a visit, its so near to us, the first time the WCPF have held it there.

AGM and Presentations 26 April

Our AGM was uneventful with no issues with just a couple of changes to our Committee. The Summer and Winter Programme has now been produced.

The results for this seasons Competitions are as follows and awards were presented to the members. It was good to see a few different names winning. The Chairmans Shield was awarded to Steve Currie. Below images of the members getting their awards.

Mono Prints Monthly Competition: 1st Caroline Ovens, 2nd Sheila Haycox, 3rd Derrick Holliday
Colour Prints Monthly Competion: 1st Jenny Baker, 2nd Sheila Haycox, 3rd Steve Currie
Digitally Projected Images Monthly Competition: 1st John Wickett, 2nd Dave McHutchison, 3rd Jenny Baker
Panels Mono Prints: 1st Derrick Holliday, 2nd Derrick Holliday, 3rd Steve Currie
Panels Colour Prints: 1st John Wickett, 2nd Derrick Holliday, 3rd Christine Chittock
Panels Digital: 1st John Wickett, 2nd John Perriam, 3rd Derrick Holliday
Set Subject: Overall Winner Sheila Haycox

WCPF Members Exhibition Successes in our Club, a Gold!

A few of our members got acceptances in the members exhibition some getting Highly Commended, but I am so pleased to be able to announce that John Wickett got the Gold Medal and Millennium Trophy for his Mono Print Jurassic Stack, John also had other acceptances. Well done John, very well deserved. John Perriam, Steve Currie, Derrick Holliday and myself got acceptances and John, with his MG Leaping Up Simms Hill and me with The Metro getting a Highly Commended and Certificate.

The Members Exhibition is being held this year in the Medieval Hall at Buckfast Abbey, Devon TQ11 0EE from 11th May - 26th May 2013. The projection of accepted digital images will be in the adjacent Parish Room at 11:00am on 11th May. This will be followed by a lunch break and then the official opening of the exhibition in the Medieval Hall at 2pm. Parking at the Abbey is free of charge and there are gardens, shops, and a restaurant in the Abbey grounds.

I do hope you will be able to go and view the exhibition it is well worth visiting. Some of the acceptances throughout the Western Area of the WCPF will not be displayed at the exhibtion because of lack of space but there will be a Travelling Exhibition for these prints which will be shown at our Club on the 8th November 2013. Anyone is welcome to view the digital images and print exhibition 11th May which is the opening day of the exhibition.

I shall be stewarding the exhibition for a couple of afternoons and if anyone is willing to do a `stint` for an afternoon or morning please let me know.

Update on Horseshoe Trophy and South Devon Photographic League Competition from Mo Martin

South Devon League

Each of the 4 teams in this competition – Crediton, Dawlish and Teignmouth, Exmouth and Newton Abbott – have to produce 15 prints and 15 dpi’s, each of which are marked out of 20. After the prints section Newton Abbott were in a clear lead (256 pts) with Crediton 2nd (226), Exmouth 3rd (219) and Dawlish and Teignmouth 4th (209).

The projected images section of the competition was held at Dawlish on Wednesday 27th. The judge, Brian Galbraith, gave an excellent critique of all the images and, despite some mixed revues, we were slowly catching Crediton. At the end of the evening the dpi scores were Newton Abbott 211, Exmouth 183, Dawlish 179 and Crediton 174. This meant that the final positions were: Newton Abbott 1st with 467 points, Exmouth 2nd with 402, Crediton 3rd with 400 and Dawlish and Teignmouth 4th with 388.

Our top scoring images were ‘A Winter Walk to Work’ by Carol Hyett and Sheila Haycox’s ‘Gateshead Bridges’ both with 15 points; Teresa Brown with 16 points for her ‘Strictly Morris’ and congratulations to John Wickett whose ‘Ladram Stack’ scored 17 points and was one of the top 5 images.

Horseshoe Trophy

Advance notice: The images for next years Horseshoe Trophy are Stormy Weather, Frozen in Time, New Beginnings, Abstract and Abandon

We came 2nd to Sidmouth this year so get out there and take some stunning images ready for an even better result in next years competition.

Horseshoe Trophy - 21 March 2013

The Horseshoe Trophy was held at Kilmington Village Hall between Sidmouth, Honiton, Chard, Lyme and Exmouth - a battle of prints and digital images. This being the first time that digitally images have been used in the competition.

The first half was prints and the subjects were, Close Up, Landscape, Mono, Natural History and Portrait. The judge, Janet Haines gave a very fair and considered opinion on all the prints and at the end of the first session we were tie with Sidmouth. We managed to get first on three of the subjects, namely Jurassic Stack entered in the mono section by John Wickett, Eyes Left, in the Portrait section by John Perriam and in the Landscape section, Waterfall at Welcome Bay by Jenny Baker.

After a very satisfactory buffet and a general chat during the break we moved on to the Digitally Projected images. The categories for this section were Framed, Hobbyist, Low Light, Movement and Reflections. It was unfortunate that in this section we did not get any first places, managed 2nd on four occasions. So it was a hard fight between Sidmouth and ourselves to gain being the winner of the Horseshoe Trophy. Sidmouth managed to get some 1st places therefore won the Horseshoe Trophy, with Exmouth coming second, a very close run competition.

All was not completely lost for Exmouth, Jenny Baker won with her Waterfall at Welcome Bay as the Overall Print Winner, congratulations Jenny. To see the winning print just click on our Horseshoe Trophy 2013 page. It was Sidmouth who took the prize for the overall Digital entry in the Reflections section with an image called Double Take. Janet said she wished it was hers.

An excellent evening which was hosted by Lyme Regis and the judge, Janet Haines was excellent.

Manipulated Images Evening

When at a Committee meeting Paul (Palin) suggested that Committee members provide 2 images each for Club members to manipulate / modify as they wished we thought it sounded quite a good idea. How wrong we were ..... it was an inspired idea and what an excellent, fun evening was had by all.

17 members took part taking the opportunity to practise their technical and artistic skills. Without a judge giving their comment on the final image members let their imagination take over. We had Steve (Currie) emerging from the earth, a band increasing gradually, all images put into a composite as well as many different uses of the ‘filter tool’. If you missed the evening a few of our efforts are below and if you wish to see all the images ask John W.

I am sure this project will appear again in next years Winter Programme and I hope even more of you will take part.

Mo Martin

That's all for now. Sheila