Wincanton Camera Club

Welcome to the web site of Wincanton Camera Club.

Please come in and browse. Latest news and updates are here on the home page.

As always, new members are most welcome. If you think you might be interested in joining us please come along to one of our meetings, or go to the Contact us page if you just want to get in touch with us.

Some views of Wincanton are shown to the right.

THE PROGRAMME FOR THE 2010-2011 SEASON is now available to view here.
There have been one or two changes since it was first published.

The club's annual exhibition will be held in Wincanton library from August 28 to September 18, and our next meeting will be on September 15.


COMPETITIONS FOR 2010-2011

Subjects for the club's internal awards qualifying competitions for the 2010/2011 season are:

Other internal competitions are:

External WCPF competitions for club members to enter:

REVIEW OF THE 2009-2010 SEASON

AGM AND FINAL MEETING OF THE 2009-2010 SEASON

With our meeting of 19 May we came to the end of another season. It was a busy evening, combining our AGM with the annual prize giving and the print panel competition. The last mentioned had been postponed from earlier in the year, having become a victim of the severe winter weather at the time.

AGM

And so to business. The minutes of last year's AGM were presented and approved. Each committee member presented his report on the club's affairs over the previous year. Next season's programme was presented to the membership.

The most significant event of the AGM was the retirement as chairman of Jim Eastaugh. We owe Jim a huge debt of gratitude for his service to the club in a variety of roles. He's been a member for twenty years; he served as competition secretary and latterly (for ten years) as chairman. Thank you, Jim! Happily he will continue his membership so we'll all be able to continue to draw on his experience. Tony Cole spoke for us all with his kind words when making a presentation to Jim to recognise his service.

To fill the now vacant post of chairman the membership elected Tony Cole. Roger Lush was elected competition secretary, replacing Tony in that capacity. Our webmaster, Rob Cochran, was elected to the committee (previously having been co-opted), the post replacing that of the (unfilled) publicity officer. Lachlan Fraser and David Primmer were re-elected to their posts as secretary and treasurer respectively.

Retiring chairman Jim Eastaugh receives a presentation and thanks from his successor, Tony Cole

CLUB ANNUAL AWARDS

The next item was the presentation of the awards, the LF Folkes Memorial Cup for prints and the Secretary's Shield for projected images. The winner of the LF Folkes Cup, for the fourth year in a row, was Amanda White. This was a good year for her because she did the club double this time, also winning the Secretary's Shield. Congratulations Amanda! Outgoing chairman Jim Eastaugh's final official act was to present her with both awards.

Jim Eastaugh presents Amanda White with the LF Folkes Memorial Cup...

... and the Secretary's Shield

Unfortunately, Amanda's awards were bittersweet. Sadly, from our point of view, she has decided to forge a new life overseas and will have left these shores by the time you read this. Happily, she is continuing her membership and will submit some images from afar to our competitions next season. Thank you for your committment and contribution to the club Amanda. We wish you well. Make sure you visit us if you come back for a holiday!

PRINT PANEL COMPETITION

The final part of the evening was the print panel competition. Eight members entered a panel of prints on a theme. All members present voted for their top three panels, and when the votes were counted Roger Lush, with his panel "Scenes in sepia", and Ian Middleton, with his "Birds of Florida", had the same score and therefore shared the Chairman's Trophy for their efforts. Congratulations to them and commiserations to the other entrants.

And with that another season came to an end. Time to contemplate the summer with no club meetings, and to come up with some good ideas to meet the briefs for next season's competitions.

Have a good summer everybody! See you in September, if not before.

PHOTOGRAPHY QUIZ

For our meeting on May 5 we had something new - Roger Lush's photographic quiz. Roger spent some considerable time putting together a highly entertaining and informative photography themed quiz, presented in an audio visual format with a musical soundtrack. Topics covered included identification of classic photographs, history of photography, technical theory and equipment. The audio part of the presentation provided a sting in the tail, with the final question requiring identification of the pieces heard (the titles all had a photographic connotation) during the previous questions. This, it must be admitted, did give an advantage to those contestants with an interest in popular music!

Nine of us were in attendance, conveniently allowing the formation of three teams of three. Unlike University Challenge we had no buzzers, but conferring between team members was allowed throughout. At the end of the evening, after being allowed by the questionmaster to mark our own answers, the team of Rob Cochran, Amanda White and Michael Anthony just pipped the other two teams to the winning post.

Many thanks to Roger for devising the quiz. We hope to persuade him to do another one next year!

WCPF TRAVELLING PRINT PORTFOLIO

On April 21 the Western Counties Photographic Federation (WCPF) travelling print portfolio 2009 came to the club for us to view. This is a collection of 101 prints that narrowly missed selection for the WCPF Members' Exhibition last year. The portfolio tours WCPF member clubs over the course of the year and this week was our turn to host it.

Fifteen of us had an enjoyable evening examining the prints and there was a lively discussion about their individual merits. The judges' decisions were sometimes criticised! Some of the photographs were superb and we were surprised that they hadn't been accepted for the exhibition, whilst we felt that a very few seemed to be unworthy of a place at all.

WESTERN COUNTIES PHOTOGRAPHIC FEDERATION MEMBERS' EXHIBITION

One of our members, Rob Cochran, has had his image "San Francisco" accepted in the projected images section of this year's WCPF members' exhibition.

This year the exhibition is being held from April 22 to May 21 at:
The Burton Art Gallery and Museum
Kingsley Road
Bideford
Devon
EX39 2QQ.

Opening hours: Mon-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 11am-4pm.

Further information is available on the WCPF website by clicking here.

INTERNAL COMPETITION. THEME: OPEN

Our meeting on April 7 showcased the last internal competition of the season. The theme was "Open", so there was much variety of subject matter in the photographs. 18 members were present, submitting a nicely balanced 24 prints and 24 projected images for consideration by our judge, John Tilsley of Dorchester Camera Club. John is a regular visitor to our club competitions as our judge, and yet again thanks are due to him for his insightful comments and constructive criticism.

Once again the star performer in the print section was Amanda White. The top print was her "Autumn on the Parkway", a study of Canadian wilderness. Challenging her for top spot were, er, herself with "Spirit Island", Rob Cochran with "Spiral", and Tony Cole with "The artist" and "Champagne thermal pool". When it came to the projected images the competition for best image was even more intense, with Tony Cole coming out on top with maximum points for both his images, "Return to harbour" and "Lake Matheson at dawn" (both of which were shot in New Zealand). It was a close run thing, though, with Amanda White scoring maximum points for her "Three", and Joan Williams' "Damselfly" and Lachlan Fraser's "Man with cockerel" only just behind in the scoring.

All these images, and more, can now be viewed in the Galleries section, or to go straight to them click here.


NEW WEBSITE

Our very own Amanda White has launched a new personal website. To visit it, go via our links page, or click here.

INTERCLUB COMPETITION v SHAFTESBURY

March 17 saw our annual competition with our friends from Shaftesbury, the theme this year being "Rural Decay". There was a good turnout of members from both clubs, which always makes for a more enjoyable evening. Thanks are due to our judge for the evening, Sid Jones from Dorchester Camera Club, who gave us all, I'm sure, ideas as to how we could improve our images in future with his well seen observations on each image presented to him.

As always, the competition turned out to be a close run thing. After the print section the scores were tied. We then had a break for coffee, after which the lights were dimmed for the projected images. The final result was satisfying for the home team (us!) as we managed to edge ahead right at the end of the contest and achieve a narrow win. The individual star of the evening was our own Amanda White as she was the only member of either club to score a maximum 20 points in the print section, with "The little abandoned house on the prairie". To prove that was no fluke she repeated the trick with her projected image, "Two ton"!

These images, and all the others from our internal competition on the "Rural decay" theme, are now available to view here or via the galleries page.


WCPF DPIC

The club entered the Western Counties Photographic Federation's digital projected image competition held at Exeter on St. Valentine's Day. 47 clubs entered 25 images each, with a maximum of five from any one photographer. The judges took a full day at the Corn Exchange to view all the entries, marking each out of 15, giving the highest score of 280 to Dorchester Camera Club and relegating Wincanton to 46th place with a score of 229. Natural history subjects found the most favour with the judges, so it was not surprising that Ian Wallis's photograph of a greylag goose gained one of the highest marks for Wincanton.


WHERE IS IT?

Members spirits were lifted at the next club evening when a light-hearted quiz invited participants to guess the location of photographs taken within 10 miles of Wincanton. Some were fairly easy to guess while others led to much head-scratching, but eventually our chairman, Jim Eastaugh, was declared the winner.


RURAL DECAY COMPETITION

That's what took place during our 3rd February meeting, hosted by our secretary Lachlan Fraser. A good number of prints and projected images was presented to our judge for the evening, Ian Bigg. Many thanks go to him for his observations and constructive criticism throughout the evening.

The undoubted star of the show was Amanda White, who was the only member to score a maximum 20 points for an image. What's more, she did it twice, with her print of a very rickety looking old cottage and her projected image of a rusting hulk of a car in a North American prairie ghost town. Congratulations Amanda!

These images, and the others from the competition will be available to view in the Galleries section after our contest with Shaftesbury on this theme. This event takes place on 17 March.


DIGITAL PROJECTED IMAGE COMPETITION

After the trials, tribulations and cancellation caused by the recent snow we finally managed to hold our dpi competition on 20 January. This was also our first meeting of the new year and there was a good turn out.

We invited three of our colleagues from Gillingham Photo Group to act as our guest judges for the evening, and thanks go to them for their efforts on our behalf. The format was familiar to those who watch sports such as gymnastics; each judge had cards numbered from 1 to 5, and they had a few seconds after viewing each image to assess its worth and show the appropriately numbered card. Our chairman had equally few seconds to do the sums and call out the score for the competition secretary to record. Phew! All the while the sequence of images, and there were more than fifty of them, kept rolling so the (light hearted) pressure was on. All concerned managed to maintain synchronisation and arrive simultaneously at the final image.

We had intended to pick twenty five of the images as our entry for the WCPF dpi competition. However, having had to cancel our meeting on 6 January, we would have missed the closing date had we waited until now. Therefore chairman Jim Eastaugh and competition secretary Tony Cole had previously selected the images for our entry, and now they revealed their choices. Their judgement was vindicated as many of their selections turned out to be high scorers on the night.


BRITISH HERITAGE COMPETITION

The images from our British heritage competition are now available to view by clicking here.

On November 27 we had our annual competition with Gillingham Photo Group, with British Heritage as the theme. Gillingham was the venue this year. Our secretary, Lachlan Fraser, wrote about the evening for the Blackmore Vale Magazine, as follows;

The club travelled to Gillingham for an inter-club competition with the subject 'British Heritage', judged by Brian Tarling. Wincanton won the first round, showing prints, by 165 points to Gillingham's 160. Top scorers were Rob Cochran's 'Afternoon Tea', Amanda White's 'Stonehenge', and Tony Cole's 'Chelsea Pensioners' - all with 18 out of 20. The lead was extended in the projected image round which Wincanton took by 176 points to 169, giving Wincanton an overall victory by 12 points. Highlights of this round were Lachlan Fraser's 'Steam at Corfe', scoring a possible 20, the highest mark of the evening, Roger Lush's 'Railway Heritage', and Jim Eastaugh's ' Carnival', both with 19 out of 20.


AUDIO VISUAL (AV) EVENING

25th November was an AV evening. For some of us it was our first attempt at putting together an AV presentation. For those novices it was really instructive to observe our colleagues skill at putting together an attention grabbing sequence. It was your correspondent's first effort in this field; having discovered how many hours work is needed to produce a mere 7 minute sequence I now understand why it takes so long to make a movie!

Jim Eastaugh produced two sequences from Cornwall. Roger Lush's presentation was a little closer to home, being a portrait of Somerset through all four seasons. Lachlan Fraser showed us the road to the isles in Scotland, while Rob Cochran and Amanda White crossed the Atlantic to bring us views of San Francisco and Alberta, Canada, respectively.

This was a really enjoyable evening, not only for the technique on display but also for the fascinating content of each AV sequence.

Some of these sequences are available to view by clicking here.

BRADFORD ABBAS SHIELD

It was Bradford Abbas Shield time again on Tuesday, 27 October. As is the tradition Sherborne/Bradford Abbas Camera Club played host to South Petherton Photographic Society, Yeovil Camera Club, ourselves and, for the first time (replacing Gillingham Photographic Group), Yeovil Photo Group.

This year, instead of prints and projected images, each club submitted 8 prints. Having won the shield last year we were hoping for an honourable defence of our prize and, after yet another very close contest, we were delighted to come out on top. We edged South Petherton into second place by the enormous margin of 1 point (the same as last year if memory serves).

Thanks to Sherborne/Bradford Abbas for hosting the event, and to the judge, Harold Jenkins, of Bridport Camera Club.

Chairman Jim Eastaugh (left) receives the Bradford
Abbas Shield from the judge, Harold Jenkins.
(Picture courtesy of Sherborne/Bradford Abbas Camera Club)

BRITISH HERITAGE

Hot on the heels of the Bradford Abbas Shield (the very next night in fact) came our second internal competition of the season. The theme was British heritage, and it's a harder subject than it might seem at first! 19 prints and 20 projected images made up the entry for the deliberations of our judge for the evening, Tony Marriott of Yeovil CC. A good evening was had by all, particularly those who achieved a maximum score for an image, Roger Lush, Tony Cole, Ian Wallis and Rob Cochran.