Graham Currey Photoshoot

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Friendly LSAPS Photographers

On Sunday 1st August, a group of 11 LSAPS photographers enjoyed another photoshoot with Graham Currey, starting early in the morning at Lytham Jetty, then moving on to Lytham Hall for the rest of the day.  As usual, Graham arrived with a number of different outfits ranging from an 18th century Poldark type character, through Gandalf the wizard to a 1920s newsboy. He has kindly offered to judge a small competition of images taken on the day, so once we have the results, we will post some of the images. In the meantime, the picture above taken by Graham shows the photoshoot from his point of view.

Cleveleys Photo Walk

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LSAPS Photographers at Cleveleys by Mike Halstead

On the evening of Thursday 22nd July, a group of LSAPS members attended a photo walk to Cleveleys promenade, which started on the promenade overlooking Mary’s Shell. The beach was still busy with people taking full advantage of the sunny, hot weather. With the tide out we took the opportunity to photograph ‘The Sea Orge’, which is normally covered at high tide, then made our way along the promenade taking images as we went. 21 members attended the second of four photo walks planned over the summer break and it was good to be out in the fresh air, meeting up again. By the time we returned to Mary’s Shell the tide had come in, the sun was setting and the sea was calm. We lingered a little longer to talk and watch the peaceful scene in front of us before bidding farewell.  

Let’s hope we have similar weather for the next photo walk at Stanley Park.

2021/22 Print And Digital Photographer Of The Year

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Reynisfjara Church Iceland By Carol Watson

With the announcement of Photoshow results, we also have the annual Print and Digital Photographer Of The Year awards. First, an explanation of how these are calculated.

Points are awarded for performance in each of the In-Season competitions, with 5 pts for coming first (based in the combined score of both images entered), 4pts for second etc. Points are also awarded for performance in Photoshow, again with 5pts for coming first in a category, 4 for second etc. Finally, pts are awarded for scores achieved in the L&CPU Individual competition, with 5 pts for a score of 15, 4pts for a score of 14 etc. Marks are added separately for print and digital competitions to establish the Print and Digital Photographer Of The Year.

Note that this year, there was no Print element to Set Subjects, and there was no L&CPU print competition, which restricted the points available for print competitions.

After all the calculations have been done, the placings were:-

Print Photographer Of The Year

  • 1st – Carol Watson (53pts)
  • 2nd – Sheila Giles (22pts)
  • =3rd – Andy Dickson (15pts)
  • =3rd – Ian Mulroy (15pts)

Digital Photographer Of The Year

  • 1st – Carol Watson (71pts)
  • 2nd – Gordon Watson (61pts)
  • 3rd – Kuli Virdee (37pts)

So, congratulations to Carol, for winning both categories.

 

Best Digital Image - Golden Silhouette by Brian Clarke

2021 Photoshow Results

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Best Digital Image - Golden Silhouette by Brian Clarke

Golden Silhouette by Brian Clarke – Best In Show – Digital

Photoshow results were announced on Thursday 15th July, when we had the pleasure of inviting our two judges to provide comment on the images they had selected for Awards. The Print competition was judged by Rod Whelans (MPAGB, MFIAP, FRPS, FIPF) from Dumfries Camera Club, whilst the Digital competition was judged by Pauric McGroder (ARPS, AIPPVA, FIPF) from Dublin Camera Club.

All the Awarded images are listed below. Congratulations to everyone who received an Award, but in particular to Brian Clark who received Best In Show – Digital and to Carol Watson who achieved multiple first places and also Best In Show – Prints.

2021 Photoshow Print Awards

2021 Photoshow Digital Awards

Fairhaven Photo Walk

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Paddling About by Gordon Watson

The first Photo Walk of 2021 took place on Thursday evening 8th July. It was necessary to change the location at short notice, so we visited Fairhaven Lake rather than Haslam Park, Preston.

Paddle Boarders were taking advantage of the calm conditions on the water whilst our group of 18 stayed on the land seeking out photographic opportunities. After 15 months being unable to meet up in person it was so nice to be able to chat and relax in the sunshine. Also, after joining LSAPS 12 months ago, we were finally able to meet Clare in person rather than on Zoom. It took us 1 hour 30 minutes to do a circuit of the lake taking in the spitfire memorial and the Japanese garden, so you can tell we certainly weren’t rushing.

Let’s hope we have continued good weather for the three remaining Summer Photo Walks.

The Bury Battle

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On Thursday 17th June we held an invitation competition against Bury PS. This promised to be a close fought competition as Bury had finished very close to LSAPS in the L&CPU inter-club competition. The competition was hosted by Bury and judged by Joe Houghton from Dublin Camera Club, who stepped in at the last minute when the previous judge became unavailable.

After a close fought competition of high quality images, Lytham ran out the close winners, with 457pts against Bury’s 452pts. Of particular note, all three top placed images were by Lytham members, so congratulations to Keith Orr, Graham Barker and especially Martin Christen who’s Morning Light On The Old Man Of Storr was the top placed image.

Morning Light Old Man Of Storr By Martin Christensen

3rd Open Print Competition (2020/21)

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The 3rd Open Print competition of the season was judged on 20th May by Harry Emmett (CPAGB) from Accrington Camera Club. Harry’s critique on each image was quite short and to the point, and he made comments regarding directing the viewer’s attention to achieve a particular impact and that some images could be improved by a little cropping or cloning of content. He also noted that several prints had some colour casts that let them down, and that choice of paper could also be important. Congratulations to Gordon Watson, whose Scaleber Force was the only image awarded 20pts on the night.

3rd Open Print Competition – Image Gallery

Scaleber Force by Gordon Watson

2021 L&CPU Individual Competition

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Avocet Feeding By Anthony Hull

The 2021 L&CPU Individual Competition was judged over the weekend of 8th May, with 3 judges each awarding up to 5 marks for each image. Under normal Exhibition rules, a score of 12pts would be considered an Acceptance. 11 LSAPS Photographers entered, and of these, 8 achieved a score of 12 and above with at least 1 image – Carol Watson (12), Kuli Virdee (11), Gordon Watson (10), Martin Christensen (3), Peter Parnell (3), Anthony Hull (2), Stuart Cahill (1), Andy Dickson (1). Congratulations to all who achieved an Acceptance score and in particular to Carol, who was the highest placed LSAPS photographer overall, coming in 13th place.

Carol, Kuli, Peter and Anthony all achieved a score of 13 for at least 1 image, however Anthony’s Avocet Feeding was the only LSAPS image to achieve this in Nature.

2nd Open Print Competition (2020/21)

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The 2nd Open Print competition of the season was judged on 15th April by Nik Hilton (EFIAP, DPAGB, BPE5*) from Southport Photographic Society. Nik explained that he marked by providing a competent image with a standard score of 15, then marked images higher or lower than this depending on whether there was something extra in the image that warranted a second look, or whether there were some technical shortfalls in the image. As he judged, he could then explain why each image had scored above or below his standard. Congratulations to Andy Dickson whose Juvenile Linnet scored 20pts in Intermediate, and is the Featured Image for this competition.

Juvenile Linnet By Andy Dickson

2021 L&CPU Club Print Championship

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Pearls By Kuli Virdee

Judging of the 2021 L&CPU Club Print Championship took place on Saturday 27th March. Due to Covid restrictions this was a postal A4 print competition and judging was performed by Phil and Gwen Charnock who were sent the prints in advance, which they then scored jointly out of 20.

The field was much smaller than in the PDI competition, with only 12 clubs entering a full set of images. LSAPS matched our result in the PDI competition, placing 6th overall with 382 pts (6th in Colour, 3rd in Mono and 8th in Nature). Once again this is a good improvement on last year’s 10th place, and even though the field was smaller, the better L&CPU clubs were still represented, and it requires more good images to do well in both Print and PDI competitions.

Overall winners were Chorley PS with 420pts.

LSAPS scores are shown below – congratulations in particular to Kuli Virdee who scored a maximum 20pts for his image Pearls.