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'Judge Dread' was in town to cast a critical eye over the work of Thurso Camera Club members when they submitted images on the subject of architecture.

The club’s first meeting in March welcomed a talk by Owen Cochrane of Inverness Camera Club, whose presentation was entitled “Judging by Judge Dread”.

As the title of the presentation would suggest, Owen is an experienced judge and is accredited by the Scottish Photographic Federation. He gave an enlightening and interesting talk of his experiences and the basis upon which he judges competitions.

He introduced his presentation pointing out that we all judge images, both our own and others', and then compare them with each other. We should think about how we do this, the criteria we use, what we would want to change in any image.

He clarified “what judging means”, and that a judge’s decision is final. But, he also mentioned how we can all benefit from a structured critique of our work. Win or lose, all comments can be the basis for a learning process.

He gave examples of a selection of images from other competitions to demonstrate how they fit criteria in areas such as impact, composition, artistic quality, lighting, exposure, focus, technique, camera work, distractions within the image, originality, etc, and of course the “wow” factor.

He described how a judge would then break down elements of each image and score them accordingly.

The presentation gave structure and meaning to his very helpful critique and judgment of the club’s penultimate competition of the 2020/2021 session, which was on the theme of “architecture”. Scores were given out of 20.

The winning image with a score of 20 was The View From Oculus by Duncan MacLachlan. Owen pointed out how well all aspects and originality of this image worked. Definitely one with the “wow” factor.

In second place with a score of 19 was Margaret Reid with an image of the National Museum of Scotland, with comments of a striking image with great lines and shadows.

Neil Buchan's Hapra Atrium, which was described as a good strong graphical image, came in third place with another score of 19.

Also scoring 19, Gareth Watkins came in fourth place with his image, Bus Stop. Owen said it had good strong colours, displaying the solitude and desolation of the location.

Fifth place went to Julie Catterall with The Nucleus, with reference made to the strong lines and diagonals with vertical and horizontals all level.

In sixth was Ally MacKechnie with the Chrysler Building. Comments were that this was a good crop in portrait format with good exposure and focus.

Currently at the top of the club’s league table for the 2020/2021 competitions with a clear lead of 52 points in total is Gareth Watkins, followed in second place with 36 points by James Gunn. Jason Ridgely is in third place with 27 points.

The final competition of this season’s session will be on a theme of “Lucky dip”. Each member has randomly drawn a theme of “type” and “style”, and has been invited to submit images for scoring on April 5. There will also be a talk in the first half of the meeting by James Gunn on the early days of Dounreay.

Some members from other Highland photography clubs joined the meeting via a Zoom link, while Thurso CC has continued to join online presentations, such as the previous meeting in February which linked in with Dingwall CC when a presentation was given by Brian Northmore, a landscape photographer based in Plymouth.

Dingwall CC hosted another presentation this week entitled “Architectural Photography, in search of the Genius loci”, presented by Inake Hermandez-Lasa FRPS, FIPF,AFIAP (Dublin).

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