The penultimate meeting of the season was the annual battle between the Ladies and Gents of the club but of course it was not competitive at all was it?

To make it fair, the club organises that a Lady and a Gent both do the judging and this year it was long –standing friends of the club Adrian Herring ARPS DPAGB and Vanessa Herring LRPS who took on the challenge. The judges did not know who had taken any of the 60 images so there was no bias and they did not confer so it was not until the actual competition that they knew what the other had scored. Vanessa said that she was looking for harmony, mood and something different.

Being very experienced judges they mostly made similar comments and scores with each of them awarding points out of 10. The team captains were Caroline Wright for the Ladies and Gerald Clarke for the Gents and each selected 30 images. There were limits on the number of entries from each member and some images had to be new to club competitions. Images taken by members in the Beginners and intermediate sections had 2 bonus points added to their score.

Adrian and Vanessa gave their comments on each image and then awarded the points. Frank Collins then did the maths and read out the combined scores together with any bonuses.  After the first 30 images the Gents were well ahead having gained 3 perfect 20’s and a total of 270 points against the Ladies 224 points.
After the break both sides continued with some high scores but the Ladies also had a perfect 20 resulting in both teams tying with 250 points to add to the half time scores. The final result was Ladies 474 and Gents 520 points, so well done to the Gents! Since these battles started up in 2017 the Ladies have won 3 and now the Gents are equal with 3 wins as well so all to play for in 2023!!

Nature subjects seemed to be the high scorers with 3 out of the top 4 being birds or mammals. ‘Chaffinch Dispute’ by David Wilkinson LRPS, ‘Jewel in the Winter’ by Dave Gray and ‘Red Squirrel’ by Hilary Tapley all gained a 10 from both judges.
An astro-photography image ‘Milky Way, Lulworth Ranges’ by Robert Harvey ARPS EFIAP also gained a total score of 20. Another 8 images also scored a 10 from one of the judges, so very well done to all of those. Thanks to all those whose images were entered.

Frank thanked Adrian and Vanessa for giving such constructive feedback and Adrian concluded that they had both enjoyed looking at such superb range of images. Thanks also go to Battle secretary Dave Gray for organising the competition, captains Caroline and Gerald, Frank for the scoring and Dave Eagle for all the technical knowhow with the projection and setting up Zoom for those who could not attend in person. PM