We were delighted to welcome back Guy Phillips, SPF judge and aviation buff all the way from Helensburgh, who last visited PPS to judge the 4-Way inter-club competition we hosted in 2022.
Guy was a lively judge for our mono prints, and wasn’t slow to tell us which ones he ‘really really liked’.
And he ‘really really liked’ lots of them, commenting fluently and generously on the print in front of him on the night (a great number of which were, it must be said, very likeable).
If there were themes to his commentary, a couple of things stand out.
Firstly, he liked to see shadow detail; a few prints were noted as being a bit dark, even though there was scope to bring out more. This can a be a consequence of an uncalibrated monitor, on which an image appears brighter than it really is; or of trustingly accepting the first image that emerges from the printer, without another round of critical evaluation.
Secondly, the importance of presentation. He really really liked several of the smaller prints, mounted ‘just so’ in the standard sized and relatively larger mount; and he commented on some other prints that were let down by the mounting, either by the neatness of the cutting or by the choice of mount colour for the print.
But mostly he really really liked them, and his top 5 choice can be seen on our Gallery page.
Now, here’s a novelty – spin this around at leisure (may work better on a desktop screen) ….
We’d put all the entries out on display before the comptition, the first time we’ve done this, the thinking being to let everyone have a look at the images before we started so we’d better know what was being talked about when the judging got under way.
Before tea, 44 prints were brought forward to the easel and put back on the stands as they were judged, and after tea, same again for the remaining 22 prints.
It was also the first night of active duty for our new print stands, which performed faultlessly.
Thanks to everyone who helped put up and take down the stands, and with the fetching and carrying of prints during the evening. Good teamwork, folks.
