St Helens Camera Club

For our final competition of the 2023 season we wished to encourage our members to produce actual print media, in recognition of the time and effort needed to produce large prints, not including the skill to mount the media, we decided to run the competition as an unmounted A4 print.

Our judge on the night was challenged to only consider the content of the work and not the media, we wanted to enure that content and not print quality were the primary consideration.

Our judge the experienced

George Steele
CPAGB LRPS BPE2 did an outstanding job with a brief which might be a little unisual. For this we are very, very grateful.

This is always a favorite competition with the members and with entries covering both traditional landscapes as well as city scapes our Judge Jim Cunningham CPAGB was challenged to choose winners. Many thanks to Judge Cunningham for an entertaining night and sage advice.

We were highly honoured to host this years Battle of the Clog our annual competition with Wigan Photographic Society.

We managed to win this years competition however it was a very hard fought contest and Wigan had some superb enteries across the entire competition both Print and PDI sections were hard fought contests.

We are certain that next year Wigan will come back stronger.

Our Judge on the night was no other than

James Hardy
CPAGB LRPS who provided a balanced critique of the images and was a welcome addition to the competition as a whole.

Our restricted open competition always challenges our members to shoot in ways they might not have considered. Our Judge on the night, James Pickles shone his experienced eye on the images and made many valuable and constructive remarks, which will only encourage our members to innovate and present their best work for next years Open competitions. Thank you to Judge Pickles and to all our members who submitted their work for the competition.

This is always a competion which attract a lot of comments and discussion, luckily we were Judged by John Riley who navigated his way around some top class efforts from the members. As always insightfull comments and gentle advice were much in evidence by Judge Rileywho we thank and hope to see again soon.

We are delighted and excited to welcome Geoff Simpson, who will be presenting his lecture on the 5th December via Zoom titled ‘ The Realm of Andalucia ‘ . Geoff introduces himself as such.

‘I have never followed the crowd; I am very much a lone wolf and have always worked only on my home patch hence my unique images. A lifelong naturalist, first and foremost, my early attempts at capturing Mother Earth were that of a keen watercolour artist that later paved the way to my photographic career.” https://www.geoffsimpsonart.com/ ‘

We cant wait to welcome such a talented artist and photographer.

We welocome Judge: Rebecca Entwistle to our club this evening for our annual Portrait competition. It is always a delight when a Judge is as warm and encouraging as Judge Entwistle, she brought her insight and critical eye to bare on our Photographs and with encouragment and critique made her decisions. Thank you again to our Judge for her efforts and insights.

After the success of our Soul Train photographic assignment we return to regular comptitions and we welcomed Judge Terry Hewitt to officiate. As always with Judge Hewitt we were treated to insightful and relevant critique, which will help them members grow and grow. Congratulations to everyo who took part and thanks once more to Judge Hewitt.

We were approached by Soul Train to photograph their wonderful show at our local theatre. We have to thank all the cast of Soul Train and the staff at the Theatre Royal St Helens for allowing us access and time to cover the show. Both Stephen Sheridan and Paul Simms did a wonderful job in capturing the energy and fun of the evening. As camera clubs we sometimes are thought of as tied to one or two genres of photography, however at St Helens camera club we pride ourselves on the fact that we cover all genres. Hope you enjoy the pictures from the night. Credit to the performers at Soul Train. All images are copyright by Stephen Sheridan and Paul Simms. all rights reserved 2022.

We come at last to our Annual exhibition showcasing work created by our members throughout the year, we were joined by Judge Rob Hockney DPAGB BPE5 who had a difficult job in scoring our efforts from this year. Many thanks to everyone who contributed and most especially to Judge Hockney on the evening.