AmateurPhotographer

INBOX
was a title given to the
train that ran between
Kings Cross and Edinburgh,
not the locomotive. As your
letter suggests, Flying
Scotsman should not have
been described as a steam
train, and to be technically
correct, it’s a steam
locomotive – Michael
Topham, deputy
technical editor
A matter of taste
I have been a member of
a camera club for 63 years,
so it is not surprising that John
Heywood’s letter (A reminder
to judges in Inbox, AP 9 April)
grabbed my attention. The
next page I always turn to
on receiving my AP on a
Saturday is Roger Hicks’s
column, and on this occasion
it was a critique of ‘Abstraction
#X, Wall Meets Floor’, 2005,
by Pavel Banka. The two
contributions triggered a
memory of a club competition
we had some years ago,
when I showed a print of the
above image entitled
‘Freedom’. It’s a shot of a gull
crossing the tide line, taken
from a nearby hill with
a Kodak Brownie Twin 20
camera. The judge’s
immediate response was:
‘This photograph leaves me
cold. I really wonder why it
was taken.’ Not a particularly
helpful assessment, but
© VANDA RALEVSKA
accepted as an honest opinion
of my work. I entered the
same print in the next monthly
competition, where the judge
was a photographer with
numerous international
competition and salon entries
to his credit: it won fi rst place!
What did I learn from the
experience? Well, three things:
there is ‘your taste’, ‘my taste’
and ‘no taste’. My experience
of club judges has been that
the vast majority do a good
job, giving their time and
experience generously. The
very few, such as those in
John Heywood’s case,
should be regarded as light
entertainment and do not
have to be asked to come
again. To paraphrase Roger
Hicks’s concluding sentence:
for me, looking at others’ work
is how we learn to appreciate
photography, and is the main
purpose and real value of
camera clubs.
Clifford Brown, Somerset
Well said, Clifford. As a
judge in several major
national photographic
competitions, I’m often
baffled by the tastes of
the other judges, but I’m
always interested to hear
the reasons for their likes
or dislikes. Photography is
subjective, and at an
amateur level should be
more about trying to please
ourselves, rather than
second guessing the tastes
of a random judge. If others
happen to like our work
then that’s a bonus – Nigel
Atherton, Editor
In next week’s issue On sale Tuesday 17 May
Landscape
loversÉ
Don’t keep your landscape photos
a secret – join a collective
One judge wasn’t impressed by this image, while another loved it
Canon EOS 80D
Michael Topham finds
out whether Canon has
another game-changing
DSLR in the shape of
the 24MP EOS 80D
Sony FE 85mm
f/1.4 GM
Richard Sibley tests
Sony’s telephoto
prime lens for
Alpha 7 cameras
Life’s a beach
Jon Gibbs explains how
to seek out the subtle
beauty of sand dunes
© CLIFFORD BROWN
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