On Thursday 18th April we held a session which we called Our Turn To Be A Judge. The idea was that our members were given the opportunity to critique images in the manner of a judge and to then award scores out of 20. This required us to put ourselves in the shoes of a competition judge and to understand how difficult it is for them to come up with insights (preferably in an entertaining and constructive  manner) and decisions.  

We showed over 60 images which had been submitted to an inter-club competition in the East Midlands in 2019. We also had a record of the scores out of 20 which had been awarded by the actual competition judge, a professional and well qualified photographer, for each of the images.

Individual members reviewed and commented upon individual images which were on general display to us all. Views were expressed about cropping, saturation, composition, exposure levels, focus etc. It was very interesting to find that the points awarded by our individual members were often quite different to those awarded by the judge back in 2019 and that the marks we gave were normally lower than those of the judge!

The view at the end of the evening was that it had been an enjoyable and interesting session. Maybe - just maybe - we won't be quite as critical of the images of our competition judges in the future!

Ray Barnes
CCC Programme secretary

      On the evening of Thursday 11th April we held our final competition of the season
 The Chris Crane Cup
The late Chris Crane was a keen and much-respected member of Cramlington Camera Club and this annual competition is held to commemorate Chris' contributions to the club. Chris was particularly interested in the genres of landscapes, engineering and nature photography and so we use these as the themes for the Chris Crane Cup.
 
Glen Lawson was our entertaining and amusing judge for the evening. He had obviously spent a good deal of time studying our images which, as normal, had been supplied to him in advance of the meeting and had also given much consideration to his prepared comments. At the end of the meeting our President, Chris Houghton, thanked Glen and stated that his comments about our images were almost poetic! 
 
Glen's comments were positive and encouraging. He did not criticise any of our efforts although he did make many useful suggestions about how they could be improved. His suggestions included converting from colour to monochrome, cropping, removing unnecessary or distracting areas and reducing levels of exposure.

The list of placings for this cup competition was as follows:
 1.  White Barn Owl - Adam Burness
2.  Sunrise At Bamburgh - Ray Thompson
3.  Mud Glorious Mud - Bob Finlay
4.  Male great Spotted Woodpecker - Bob Finlay
5.  Ground Hornbill - Colin Livingstone

​This was our penultimate meeting of the 2023/24 season before our AGM/Presentation Night on 25th April.
 
Ray Barnes
Programme Secretary

​4th April we had the pleasure of Alan Wilson judging our 3rd PDI Competition. Alan is the Past President of the NCPF and is the current Northern Focus Editor and Competitions Secretary.
Alan discussed each image in great detail describing how he suggested how the image was created as well as going into the history of many subjects so there was a mass of research from Alan gone into each image giving an extra dimension that everyone listened with enthusiasm. After running through all the images Alan presented 5th to 1st Place positions.
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Colin Byrne
​PDI Competition Secretary & Webmaster