On 27th October we had Graeme Clarke judging our Nature competition. Graeme is a specialist Nature judge with a life long interest in the natural world, and this came to the fore as we presented him with the Herculean task of judging 88 images across a wide spectrum of natural scenarios. Graeme rose to this challenge.
First Graeme outlined what factors he took into consideration, not only the usual ones any judge would use such as exposure etc, but also how the image reflected the subject's interaction with the natural world, the setting of the image, and also whether the image was displaying natural behaviour. Graeme had analysed each image in detail, as was immediately obvious from the concise nature he was able to deliver his comments, pulling out subtle hints on composition, cropping, muting distracting elements in the frame, and so on. He also enlightened his talk by giving points on the subjects. I didn't know that red squirrels had to eat every 20 minutes as their body size is so small the metabolism can't process any more food, or that Rock Pythons will only eat food alive or at body temperature!
There were some stunning images to consider throughout, everything from macro fungi shots to wild African landscapes. The evening flew past and was followed by a lively debate. The members thoroughly enjoyed the show and were extremely gateful to Graeme for the comments, the work he put into his judging, and his concise but incisive delivery.
The results are on the website but huge congratulations to Joan Sheppard for a worthy first and second place with 2 totally different styles of image.