With the winter nights starting to show signs of drawing out waking up from their hibernation and early snowdrops peppering grass verges would you know it; Open Competition 5 is now upon us and February is here already and memories of Christmas becoming the distant past.

A healthy crowd gathered in the dingle Centre for this month’s Open Competition. Mid-Cheshire Camera Club welcomes a new Judge to our Parish in the form of Mr Nick Berentzen (CPAGB, BPE1*) from South Manchester Camera Club. Nick has been a keen photographer for 30 years and judging competitions for 10 years in the East of the country and in recent years in the North West. His personal favourite genre is travel and landscape photography. His first camera was a Rico (1980s) but now he shoots with a Canon EOS 5D and 7DMk2. Nick’s advice to any camera club member is to “enjoy your photography and don’t let competitions get in the way of that enjoyment”
With 21 Prints and 39 Projected Digital Images Nick, his work cut out for him.

As this is an Open competition, members are able to submit images from any genre. Genres from tonight’s selection of images included: Portraiture, Journalism, Record, Architectural and Natural History.

Nick’s unique style and attention to detail made the whole spectacle a really enjoyable affair with balanced feedback being offered across the cohort of images. Nick brought his own preferences or bias some of which we have not heard before such as; taking an image from a low perspective enhances the subject in environmental portraits but when taking landscapes, the opposite is preferred – getting higher in relation to your subject provides a more pleasing image. Nick hammered the point a number of times about the importance of a plain out of focus background when wanting to improve the overall quality of an image. Nick made comment on the use of natural objects to frame a subject and added there is drama in lighting and we need to use it to good effect.

It was not long before the results were in.

Open Large prints
Position	Author	Title	League Marks
1	Sheila Regan	Untouched Glacial Wilderness	20
2	Jim Cain	Elephant Hawk mouth	19
3	Tom Sheckleston	Storm Clouds over Monument Valley	18

Open PDI's
Position	Author	Title	League Marks
1	Jim Cain	Red squirrel	20
2	Sheila Regan	Blue Co-ordination	19
3	Kath Hill	Mad Hatter	18

Congratulations to all the winners and runners up and a thank you to all the members taking part. A final big thank you goes to our Judge – Nick Berentzen, who provided sound and honest feedback throughout the whole evening. We look forward to seeing him again next year.

For more information about the Mid-Cheshire Camera Club visit our website at www.midcheshirecameraclub.org or come along to a meeting on Wednesday evening at 7.45 for 8pm at the Dingle Recreation Centre, Winsford.