We finished our Spring/Summer events with the fourth round of the 2025 print competition with a set theme of “High Key”*. The external judge was David Steele DPAGB who is, himself, an exponent of the High Key style, so he knew what he was looking for. David had a look through the pictures before the judging “proper” and commented favourably on both the quality and quantity of the prints in contention.
Once the evening got underway, it became clear that David was going to be strict in his assessments. While offering constructive criticism, if a picture did not fit the bill as High Key, it was marked appropriately.

In the General Class, three images (out of the 15 entered) were held-back for a second look. Ultimately, Yve Paige was the only person to gain a “perfect” score of 20 for her portrait of her oldest granddaughter. She says, “I took this photograph while on a family holiday. It is my eldest granddaughter and I’ll be totally honest and say it was a bit of a mistake as I had been photographing family under the shade of a tree when she said “take my photo Nan” and without thinking I snapped a few before checking them and realised I had not adjusted the light, but in saying that I was rather pleased with myself for making the “mistake”.“

The Advanced Class was a larger field with 36 prints in contention. David was firmer with his scoring in this class and despite that he held-back 15 images for a second look. That, in itself, being a reflection of the quality of images presented. In the end, four received the coveted score of 20. Two to Chris Gilbert and one each to Marion and Malcolm Rapier.

Of his picture ““En pointe”, Malcom said “‘En Pointe’ was taken on a photo-walk in London, in the company of a model who was also a trained dancer. The image was set against a backdrop of modern architecture, which was very intrusive. I initially selected only the background to reduce its impact using adjustments within Photoshop. I then turned attention to the model changing her pale blue dress into a grey before converting the whole image to black and white.”  Marion added “‘Lisbon Colonnade’ was my interpretation of an architectural image presented in a ‘high key’ form. The image was taken on short break to Lisbon in one of its most majestic squares. My aim was to use a high key approach, in post processing, to simplify the structure and make is appear more as a pencil sketch. The perspective within the shot and receding arches really appealed. I converted the colour image into black and white as I felt this to be more in keeping. I then applied various adjustments within Photoshop to produce the image that I was aiming for. It was fortunate that there were a few figures present to provide a sense of scale.”

Our next meeting will be a Zoom on 15th September and then the first face to face meeting back at Wyllyotts Theatre on 22nd September.

* High Key is a term to describe images that are bright and contain little to no shadow.