April 2023 – Sports and Action

Judge: Barney Douglas

It’s been ten months since I was last judging one of your club’s competitions, and for those of you that don’t know that ten months has, for me, involved a massive house move from southern England to central France just south of Limoges and the imminent purchase of a holiday apartment as well in the foothills of the Pyrenees at Axat.

Once again thank you so much for the invitation to adjudicate on this competition. Again there is only an Advanced entry, no Beginners or Intermediate, and the subject is sport. Again this group is of a very high standard indeed and I have really enjoyed going through the entries. For me sport usually means football and I have been very fortunate to be appointed the official photographer to my new local club here in France. But sport isn’t always about speed and movement, and more often is about carefully controlled precision.

Once again I am taking the images in order of title and I’ll then pick out my highlight image(s) from each group and again I am checking the White Balance setting on all images for which it was available.

Advanced level: As I have mentioned before, at this level I should see at least a third of photos worthy of a Licentiate-ship panel at the RPS, not all, but at least some. In the pets and animals group I judged in July 2022 it was well above that figure. So, there’s the whistle for kick-off.