Award winning members.

Congratulations to some of our award winning club members:

  • Catherine Dashwood - 2 images selected into the Bristol Salon run by Bristol Photographic Society

  • Faye for her Sweat Peas which has won the Chairman’s medal at Southampton Interntational Exhibition run by Southampton Camera Club

  • Lyn Rendal for her Avocets that won a SCC Certifitcate at Southampton Interntational Exhibition run by Southampton Camera Club

  • Catherine Dashwood for Scarlett and Sunny which won a SCC Medal at Southampton Interntational Exhibition run by Southampton Camera Club

May - June 2019

May Day delivered a treat. John Lewis, our last speaker of the season delighted us with a presentation titled 'Seasons of the New Forest'. John explained that there are no towns, only villages within the New Forest, together with 26 miles of coastline and he portrayed all of this throughout the four seasons. We were also fascinated to learn about John's ancestors - his Great Grandfather and Great Uncle were also photographers and recorded many of the old traditions and customs of the New Forest. John gave many useful tips on how he took his pictures and more importantly, where - providing great tips for members who quizzed him during coffee break and at the end.

We held our final round of our DPI League competition on the 8th May. The subject featured was 'Landscapes' and covered seascapes, cityscapes and industrial landscapes. Zaid Meherali was the judge and he chose 'Teton Mountains' by John Livy as the winner and 'Zabriskie Point' by Neil Grimshaw as runner-up. Zaid was very complimentary of the range of images provided and kept up an interesting commentary explaining his scores throughout the evening

On the 15th May our good friends from Ealing and Hampshire House visited us for our Annual Derby competition, judged by Roy Lambeth. Roy was faced with a variety of high-class prints and digital images to critique. The results were extremely close with Highcliffe and Infinity winning the print section by 1 point and the DPI by 2 points.

The final competition of the season 'Best of Year' was held on 22nd May - this was to find the  best overall individual print and DPI image from all this season's competitions. Tony Oliver, an experienced judge, enjoyed his task of selecting the winning images from an enormous range of subjects. In the print section Nicky Pascoe's monochrome image 'Erin on Pointe' was placed first, 'Luna and Buddy' by Catherine Dashwood was runner-up with Brian Adkins's 'Starters Hut Mudeford' Highly Commended. The DPI section was won by Frank Leavesley with 'Mirrored Movement', runner-up was 'Gannet in Campion' by Jules Syrett and Jim Budd's image 'Landing Gear Down' earned Highly Commended.

We rounded off the 2018/19 season with our annual dinner and prize-giving held at the Lord Bute in Highcliffe. There will be an informal summer programme of events for those who wish to continue with their photography over the summer months.

April 2019

Our 1st meeting of the month, 3rd April,  was 'An Introduction to Music & Sport Photography' presented by Michael Berkeley LRPS. He is a member of Fordingbridge Camera club and works in the Salisbury and surrounding area specialising in music and sport. He explained that the lighting at many of these sporting and music events is usually way out of his control and so it is a continuous challenge to ‘catch the moment' successfully and to isolate the particular point of interest. Amazing sports images captured at a variety of venues such as cricket, football, polo and eventing were on display alongside colourful pictures of various music bands taken at 'The Joiners' venue in Southampton.

Our 2nd April meeting was an in-house workshop evening themed 'Before and After'.  Several club members offered to give tutorials on how their particular images had been created or improved using photo-editing  programmes. Using a laptop link to our main DPI screen they firstly showed their original out of camera images and then through a series of steps explained how the final picture was achieved - an eye-opening evening! Creative skills included taking several images recorded over a short period of time and merging into a single image, taking several disparate images and creating one complex image and the creation of a modern interpretation of an old master. See the In House Events blog for more details and images

On the 17th April we had the privilege of a presentation of this year's Southampton International print awards and acceptances by Sue Sibley of Southampton Camera Club.  She gave us a few tips on how to get our images accepted into this International Exhibition; firstly the image must have immediate 'impact' and then to gain an award there must also be 'detail'.  Five of our members were successful  in gaining print acceptances at this year's International;  Catherine Dashwood (1), Fay Bowles (3), Jim Pascoe (2), Karen Coller (1) and Nicky Pascoe (1), there were also three members  who gained acceptances in the DPI section; Catherine Dashwood (2), Jim Young (1) and Paul Berkeley (1). Congratulations to all named.

On 24th April we held the last Open theme in the Round 5 of our DPI League competition and was judged by Jon Mitchell who gave a very rounded critique with his renowned touch of humour thrown in. A very strong collection of images covering birds, dogs and fishermen was whittled to 3 images scoring the perfect 10 and 9 gaining 9.5. Elaine Adkins image ‘New Growth’ was judged the overall winner with ‘Playing Fives’ by Jim Pascoe and ‘Shading from the Sun’ by Clive Hollingshead close joint 2nd.

March 2019

Our 1st meeting of the month saw the club play host to the Southern Counties Photographic Federation (SCPF) League 2 for round 6 of the PDI competition, judged by Paul Bradley. The club came a close 2nd to the winners Disabled Photographers CC with Steyning CC in third place. The event was well attended with representatives from the other 7 club in our league.

The following week we welcomed Dave Mason as guest presenter who gave a talk titled 'Life' - an interesting insight into Street Photography.  His preference for basing his photographs around postage and signage was very apparent and he explained that he prefers not to make eye contact with his subjects as this, to his mind, then becomes portraiture as opposed to street photography.  We enjoyed seeing a selection of Dave's images, mostly urban, but often very humorous. Dave’s extensive portfolio can be seen here - https://www.davemasonimages.com/

On Monday 18th March Highcliffe and Infinity  and Southampton Camera Club were guests at Dorchester Camera Club whose turn it was to host our annual friendly Triple Challenge Competition.  Despite the competitive nature of these three clubs we had a leisurely and enjoyable evening -  the result was; Dorchester 1st, Highcliffe 2nd and Southampton 3rd.

'Monochrome' was the subject of round 5 of our internal Print League on the 20th March.  A very large and high quality selection of images awaited our judge Glyn Paton, who had the unenviable task of critiquing and choosing the winners.  He finally chose Nicky Pascoe's image 'Erin on Points' as overall winner with Neil Grimshaw's image 'Queen Sofia Palace of Arts' as runner-up.  'Into the Light' by Elaine Adkins was placed 3rd. The full scores can be found here - https://www.highcliffeandinfinity.org/print-league

The following week we ran Norrie Phillips Memorial Trophy competition. This was a digital projection competition where creativity was the key element, so members could showcase their creative flair not only in the use of image editing software but also in-camera. Attending club members judged and they awarded top marks to 3 images;  'Blue Dolphins born from Blue Flowers' by Lyn Rendall was voted 1st, 'The Beach' by Jim Young was runner-up with 'La Folie' by Brian Adkins 3rd. The full score and images can be found here - https://www.highcliffeandinfinity.org/the-digital-projection

Finally We entered prints and digital images in the SCPF Championships event on Sunday 24th March hosted by Hungerford CC.

From the 21 Clubs in the Print comp we came 9th; Lyn Rendall won a Highly Commended Certificate for her print 'Avocets', and Jim Pascoe won the Gold Medal for best print of the competition for his print 'Dog Walker'.

From the 28 Clubs in the PDI competition we came 16th; and Frank Leavesley won a Highly Commended Certificate for his PDI image 'Cool Start'.