Guildford Photography Society Print Competition No 4

I submitted two entries into this internal competition.

Footbridge, Paris:

Canon Powershot at 6mm: 1/60th at f/8

We had a few days in Paris in June 2009, and we crossed this bridge to get across to the Louvre and Tuileries. I decided to submit this image as I felt it had some interesting graphical elements, in particular that the shape of the sky seems to be a mirror image of the shape of the stairs. The light on the steps and the struts on the side also contributed to the image. This particular image was the only one where I was fortunate to catch some people just at the head of the stairs just at where the eye is drawn by the stairs. Unfortunately they are looking at their feet, but nothing could be done about that. The picture also includes the backs of people who are sitting on benches on the upper level. My only hesitation was that this is not a subject that I normally would find interesting.

The judge liked the composition and presentation and made no specific suggestions or criticism. However, the score given of 7 and a half out of ten which is relatively poor suggests that the picture lacked a vital spark. Someone suggested to me that maybe it was slightly overexposed.

Frost encrused leaves:

Nikon 70-210 mm lens with Nikon Close Up lens. f/13 at 1/125th ISO 320 (tripod)

There was freezing fog just after New Year and I went out into the garden for an hour photographing the frosted leaves. This photograph was my favourite of the images I took. I liked the repeated shapes of the leaves, the backlighting of the leaves and frost and the red stem which enlivens the image. The judge appreciated the repeated leaf shapes and frost. He noted the light area of the background in the upper left, which he praised rather than criticised saying that he disliked images where the background was totally uniform in tone. This time he gave a score of 8 out of 10. I also felt that this image was far more striking and attractive than my other entry of the Footbridge. I also noted that 8 was the highest score he gave except for two images scoring 10 out of 10, and only a handful of images scored 8. This was accordingly quite a pleasing result.