Niall Whelan Photography

Earlier this year I was lucky enough to attain the title Advanced Photographer of the Year in Celbridge Camera club.  This accalade took me ten years to achieve, so was much appreciated when I finally won the title.   The POTY competition is somewhat of a numbers game.  6 images submitted in 6 monthly rounds, so you have to have your work well prepared if you want to do well in this competition.  Consistently producing high quality works well in advance of “hand-in” night can make a big difference. 

So this year I thought I’d document my year of entries to see if I can retain the title, and maybe encourage other club members to push themselves on their own journey of photographic art.

The first category of images judged this month was Digital Projected Image, and these were my entries.

I was hopeful “Joy” would do well since it had already received an honourable mention in an international salon recently.  In the end neither image was placed in the top scores of the night.

Next category was Colour Print:

We had the opportunity to learn who the judge was before the hand-in night, so i took the opportunity to look at their own work and get an idea of their taste.  This may seem irrelevant, but in the end when a judge is faced with a choice of images for top score, personal preference does play a role.  So it’s always helpful to align your submissions with the judge if known, assuming all your works are equally outstanding:-)

So my thinking was this judge would have a preference for street and portrait photos over some of my art nude works.  So with that in mind I chose some clothed model images for colour prints.  Both did well, getting 4th and 5th place in the end. 

Finally, Monochrome Prints:

My favourite most recent landscape B&W print was taken in Tuscany in August and received favourable comments, but no placement in the final scores.  On the other hand, my one and only Art Nude submission “Reclined” featuring Tillie Feather managed to get third place.

So, was I right or wrong to consider judges own style to predict the verdict, we will never know…  In the end there are many variables when judging so many outstanding images in these monthly competition, that putting your best images foreward might be the best practice.

Overall I did not do disastrously, and you have to play the long game over many months.  So I console myself with knowing I have a full bag of images yet to unveil for the remaining months, and many winter nights to improve my selection and processing of additional images.

An additional entry is allowed for three themed months, and this month the theme was Shapes, and I entered the image of Mischkah below:

This was entered as a Digital Project Image, and again received good comments but a low score.

So the next month entry is two weeks away, time to figure out 6 more images to wow the judge…