Water’s Edge, was judged by our own Tuck Leong, he said that “The entries for April’s competition were of a high standard; unfortunately quite a few did not comply with the Month’s set subject – Water’s Edge”. Below are a the four winners from each of the categories, congratulations to Ron, Ross, Vicki and Warren.

A Grade Print – Ron Weatherhead ” Water’s Edge ”

Tuck said, the winning print is a colourful yet simple composition of waves against rocks and a ramp leading into the water. The image reveals craftsmanship in the taking of the photograph and in the making of the print. Ron added, I took this photograph near Cape Conran in Gippsland. When I saw that the club’s competition was to be “Water’s Edge”, I thought that this image fitted the bill. I liked the colour of the rocks and the sea, the pier leading into the deep added perspective.

B Grade Print – Vicki Moritz ‘Lough Derg’

Tuck said, a lovely print was presented of a row of blue boats amongst the reeds. The overall tones are harmonious with the saturated colour of the boats drawing attention to their position along the water’s edge. Vicki added, Lough Derg is a large body of water in Ireland along the Shannon River near Portumna. This pretty much typified the week of summer weather we experienced- I don’t think the boats were launched that week! It was taken with Canon 40D with EFS 17-85 f4 lens, handheld.

A Grade EDI – Ross Garner ‘Tree and Lake’

Tuck said, the warm directional light revealed the organic form of the overhanging limbs of a tree against dark rippling water. Whilst the water’s edge is not visible, it is implied by the tree limbs leaning across the water.

B Grade EDI – Warren Knower ‘Reflection’

Tuck said, the top image consists of a monochrome image with delicate tonality. The over-hanging branches traced a filigree design and reinforced by the strong graphic lines of the rush from the bank. Warren added, the photograph was taken one afternoon on a dreary winter’s day in the Queen Victoria Gardens. I find the reflections fascinating and along with the reeds they tend to disorientate the viewer on which way is up.

The WCC August competition subject is ‘Still Life’ and I have been approached on a couple of occasions to define what ‘Still Life’ actually means. Well it just happens that the Digital Photography + Design magazine had the very same question asked of them. Therefore I have used the same answer as they did to define what ‘Still Life’ is and you can find it as described below, published in the pages of Wikipedia.

A still life (plural still lifes [1]) is a work of art depicting mostly inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which may be either natural (food, flowers, plants, rocks, or shells) or man-made (drinking glasses, books, vases, jewellery, coins, pipes, and so on) in an artificial setting. With origins in ancient times and most popular in Western art since the 17th century, still life paintings give the artist more leeway in the arrangement of design elements within a composition than do paintings of other types of subjects such as landscape or portraiture. Still life paintings, particularly before 1700, often contained religious and allegorical symbolism relating to the objects depicted. Some modern still life breaks the two-dimensional barrier and employs three-dimensional mixed media, and uses found objects, photography, computer graphics, as well as video and sound.

Courtesy of Wikipedia

A brief but informative introduction to 4-Club from the WCC President, Pete Davies.

There are competitions being run outside of WCC’s monthly comp and lots of photography clubs get together and stage inter club competitions. Waverley is involved in one known as 4 Club, every six months (usually April and October) we join up with Berwick Viewfinders, Eastern Suburbs Photographic Society and Maroondah Photographic Society. The clubs take turns to host the event and Waverley does it in April during the odd number years and when Waverley is not hosting the 4 Club it receives a letter from the host club asking for entries.

We are invited to enter 6 colour, 6 monochrome and 6 digital prints. There is an individual medal given to the maker of the best entry in each class while all the scores are tallied up in each section and the top club in each section is awarded a trophy. Last time around Waverley won everything except for one trophy. Can we do it again? Come along and see.

When you see 4 Club Selection Night listed in the program bring along some prints and or digital for everybody to have a look at. General consensus decides which entries are chosen and we try to spread the entries between as many makers as possible. When we do host the 4 club comp we move into the Community Centre on the corner of Stephenson’s Road and Miller Crescent. If you look out of the kitchen window in Wadham House and across the car park you are looking at the Community Centre.

Please bring a plate of food with you and arrive early as we need some equipment carted across to the Community Centre.

As a final favour could I ask you all to make an effort to introduce yourselves to at least one person that you do not recognise? The whole point of these interclub comps is to get out there and share the love so to speak. Everybody there is there because they all share a common passion so why not spread it around?

Pete Davies WCC President

Just to follow up on the President’s email, here a re a few points from the new competition rules for 2009.

As you all should know by now there has been some changes to the competition rules (A and B grades, 2 entries instead of three) and now the committee have introduced a couple more.

The first and most significant change is to the deadline.

Instead of the competition entries being due at the 3rd Tuesday workshop night, they will now be due anytime up to the competition PRIOR to the one you are entering. For e.g. If you want to submit entries to the June competition, they would be due no later than the 5th May’s competition night.

Entries for the May competition are still due on the 21st of April, this change will come into effect for the June competition onwards.

The reason for this is that there are now more camera clubs than ever before, with more members than ever before (and increasing memberships at that) putting in more comp entries than ever before. The judges, whose numbers haven’t swelled accordingly, are being inundated with requests and are, quite simply, swamped. As a committee we felt that more time given to the judge could only be of benefit to all concerned. Until now Waverley have given the judge a week to 10 days to do their critiquing before coming in to the club. Adding two weeks to that not only releases a little of the pressure we place on Albert and Peter to collate all the entries as soon as possible but should result in more considered commentary from the judge, which is, after all, the point of the competition in the first place.

The second change is that from now you must submit a digital copy with every print that you enter.

The reason for this is that we will be using the back room for the judging and putting the prints up around the front room for perusal before the judging starts. It’s too much trouble to run between the rooms grabbing prints for the judge to comment on so we decided that we would display the digital copy of the print instead. One immediate benefit of doing it this way is that from now on everybody should be able to see the (digital) print. Reflections from the lights overhead will not be a problem.

The file naming covention will be almost the same as for the EDI comp – just put a P (for print) between WCC and your grade.
For example B graders will be: WCCPB-0609-25B-Title.

The third item is conformation of the new aggregate scoring system.

No longer will a judge be required to give a score out of 15 (except for 4 Club). Instead a judge will be asked to award as many merits and highly commended awards as the judge feels are warranted. The judge will be asked to nominate one entry from each of the four sections as the best of the month.

• Every entry receiving a merit will get 2 aggregate points.
• Every entry receiving a highly commended will get 3 aggregate points.
• Each entry nominated as the best of the month will receive 1 extra aggregate point.

For the end of the year aggregate awards the winner will be the person in each section (A prints, B prints, A EDI and B EDI) with the most aggregate points.

In the event of a tie the winner will be the person who received the highest number of highly commendeds.

If things are still tied the winner will be the person who received the most nominations as the best of the month.

For the annual aggregate competition these aggregate points will reset to 0 at the start of each calendar year.

A person will be promoted to A grade once they have accumulated 30 aggregate points. This person does not have to accumulate all of these points in one calendar year. For promotion purposes a record will be kept of how many points a person has accrued since joining the club.

If a B grader accumulates enough aggregate points to be promoted to A grade before the July comp then that person shall immediately be promoted and shall carry over any aggregate points earned in that calendar year. If a B grader accumulates enough aggregate points to be promoted any time from the July comp onwards then that person’s promotion shall be held over until the start of the next calendar year.