The SPF Portfolio competition is held each autumn, and images are rated as 2, 3, 4 or 5 by each of 3 judges, giving a range of scores from 6 to 15. Afterwards, each participating club is sent DVD with a slideshow of the ‘accepted’ entries – those scoring 11 or more. And each year, our very own David Hay talks us through the show, pointing out emerging trends, creative flourishes, un-noticed errors, and insights into ‘the making of’ many of the images.
We looked at the Mono acceptances before tea, which featured four PPS images: Omar – Me and my shadow; Sandie – Boy on the bike; Wol – Sound of sunshine; Tim – Wailing widow falls.
And after tea, we looked at the Colour ones, including PPS images from: Annette – Ice bird; John – Mountain hare; Omar – Skye 2; Omar – Skye 3; Tom – Tokyo train trip lady; Ian – Lighting up time at kirkjufell; Hillary – Loch Linhie rain squall; Tom – Tokyo skyscrapers.
How did we get so many acceptance? In part because our images are good. And in part because we entered a lot of them – over 75 – curated in a wee Facebook group we set up for the purpose. This let all the authors get some peer-review input, to improve the learning all round, and to select images with a good chance of doing well.
