Some members of the club attended the 7-way club battle organised and run by Pyle & Porthcawl Photographic Society in Porthcawl on 27th February 2025 which was a very entertaining and enjoyable evening.

The judge was Paul Branchflower, a respected photographer from Swansea, who had had the prints for a month to look through them, mark them and formulate his critique. He spoke about the qualities and good points of each image and also offered his constructive criticism as well which were well thought out and gave a balanced view. As with any judge it his opinion and with another judge on another evening you may well get a different opinion.

Each club entered 6 prints from 6 different members of their respective clubs and we saw some excellent and interesting images on the night of various subjects from portrait, landscape, wildlife and sport to name a few, with the top mark for each image being 20 points.

We emerged in 5th place out of 7 clubs which was an improvement on last year where we were 5th out of 6th and the points difference was very marginal.

Below are the images we entered, and as much of the critique that I can remember to give you an idea of where the judge felt the photographs could be improved. Of course next time we could have a different judge with completely different views!

Paul suggested that the highlights in the windows were too bright.

Apart from having this photo the wrong way up, Paul suggested it would have been improved if both hands were in sharp focus.

Paul suggested this would have been improved if there was more sunlight falling on the face of the Stor. Unfortunately, I couldn’t change where the sun rose!

Paul thought the tail of the fish was blown out, and he didn’t like the colour of the water – it was too green.

Paul didn't find the sky interesting enough, and the horizon isn’t quite level.

Paul thought this would have been improved if the main lightning flash was more central.