I’m catching up on a few month’s worth of podcasts and just listening to episode 384 of The Candid Frame featuring an interview with Anya Anti, a fine art photographer whose work is in a similar vein to that of Margeritha Introna, who visited our club recently. The photograph “Butterflies in my Stomach” was specifically mentioned with the fact that there was a behind the scenes video available showing how it was made. It’s really quite fascinating to consider the pre-visualisation and planning it must take to produce a work like this with tens, if not hundreds of individual photographs taken; and the level of Photoshop skill needed is simply mind-boggling.
Last night saw the completion of the Western Cape Interclub Photographic Competition for 2017, at an event held in the CR Swart Auditorium at Sanlam’s head office in Bellville. Helderberg Photographic Society were the hosting club, perhaps for the last time as there are moves underway to move to more collaborative management of the competition; rather than having a single club responsible each year.
The evening commenced with the exhibition of print entries opening for viewing. These prints had been pre-judged a week prior to the final event. The prints will remain on exhibition in the gallery there until 17 November.
After snacks, drinks and the chance to catch up with old friends from other clubs the audience took up their places in the auditorium and the rest of the evening commenced, under the capable guidance of Bernard Seymour Hall. Thank yous were said and some spot prizes awarded before the three winning audio-visual presentations from the AV Challenge were shown. Then it was on to the live judging of the projected images following an AV previewing a selection of the entries to give the judges an impression of the overall nature of the work they were about to judge. As always this AV was produced by Antenie Carstens but due to the larger number of entries did not include all images. Antenie has also produced a full version that runs for 25 minutes and is available by contacting him.
Our judges were Jean du Plessis, Melanie Cornelius and Hansie Oosthuizen and image display and scoring were facilitated by Bennie Vivier of Tygerberg Photographic Society using the TOP system. This allowed the judges to move through the entries quickly and smoothly. Once the judging was completed there was an intermission during which time the scores were copied from Bennie’s computer into a spreadsheet on mine that calculated the various winners. I had brought along a small printer and we were able to print the winner’s names on the certificates and hand them out during the prize giving immediately before everyone went home for the evening. And now, the information you’ve all been waiting for; the winners.
The winning clubs in the print category were
Helderberg Photographic Society – 278
Tygerberg Photographic Society – 266
Tafelberg Fotografieklub – 265
and in the projected category were
Tygerberg Photographic Society – 282 points
Tafelberg Fotografieklub – 275 points
Helderberg Photographic Society – 274 points
with the overall winning clubs being
Helderberg Photographic Society – 552 points
Tygerberg Photographic Society – 548 points
Tafelberg Fotografieklub – 540 points
Christo Giliomee was the star of the competition, winning the print category with “Goodnight” a striking portrait of a leopard, which was also selected as their favourite print by both Jean du Plessis and Hansie Oosthuizen. This image was also judged best wildlife image, winning Christo a fantastic pair of Bushnell Binoculars from Tothills. This was backed up by a second high scoring image, giving Christo the highest accumulated score with 53 points, and winning him an R8,000 Manfrotto tripod from Orms.
Goodnight by Christo Giliomee
Johan Beyers was the winner of the projected category with his fantastic image “Power Falls” that I’m guessing may have been taken in Iceland. We may try to tell ourselves that it is Johan’s ability to travel to exotic locations that frequently sees him among Interclub winners but of course subject is just a small part of the making of an amazing photograph like this.
Power Falls by Johan Beyers
Both Johan and our own Danie Coetzee were close runners up for overall top scoring photographer, each scoring a total of 51 points. Each of Danie’s entries was selected as a judge’s favourite, “Everything has an end” being Melanie Cornelius’ favourite print and “Fantasy” being Jean du Plessis’ favourite projected image.
Everything has an end by Danie CoetzeeFantasy by Danie Coetzee
The other projected images selected as favourites were Magda Frylinck’s “Running in Radiant Rays” selected by Melanie Cornelius and Niël Goslett’s “Family portrait” selected by Hansie Oosthuizen, which also came in third in the projected category.
Running in Radiant Rays by Magda FrylinckFamily portrait by Niël Goslett
The full scores and results can be viewed online at Interclub 2017 Final Results and from there downloaded in your preferred format.
Every year for the past few years a number of prominent photographers, software vendors and authors have joined together to offer the 5 Day Deal, a collection of photographic tools and educational materials at a fraction of their normal cost. The deal is on again at the moment and you might like to check it out.
The deal offers
4,500+ minutes of training
1,400+ presets, actions and digital tools
340+ video tutorial segments
normally costing over $2,500 for only $117. There is also an option to pay a small additional amount that will be donated to charity and gives you additional bonus photography resources worth more than $900.
Visit 5daydeal.com for more information, but hurry; this is a time-limited offer.
On Wednesday 11 October we have a review meeting and our visiting reviewer will be fine art photographer Margherita Introna. You may wish to visit her site before the meeting to see the kind of work she does.
There are still plenty of slots available for the Stellenbosch walk I mentioned in my previous post but a second local walk has been announced that will follow a route from Muizenberg to St James and back. This walk also has plenty of slots available so there is now a choice for locals. Bear in mind though that the walk has a theme this year of “Monuments and Historic Places” so if you want to try and stick to the theme, the Stellenbosch walk might offer more along those lines.
The annual Kelby Worldwide Photowalk is almost upon us again, and it’s the 10th anniversary year. The date of the event is 7 October 2017 and there is one local walk scheduled so far for Stellenbosch. Go and join this walk or keep an eye on the site for other walks that might be planned for the Cape Town area. Or if you have an organisational bent, why not offer to lead a walk yourself.
Helderberg Photographic Society 