It is that time of the month again would you believe – Open comp night at Mid—Cheshire Camera Club. Harrah, I hear you all shout with joyous enthusiasm, well something like that…..

Well, it is Open Comp 5 and to be fair, it’s getting quite close at the top, especially the top two places. Ian Whiston has a slight lead over Ray Girling and we all know Ray enjoys a good competition so Ian, you better watch out.

Joining us this evening is our judge for tonight – Mr Nick Berentzen (CPAGB, BPE2*) from South Manchester Camera Club. Nick presented a talk on his travels to Cuba and prior to that he judged an Open Comp in Feb 20 at MCCC so we thought it would be a good idea to have him back, so he is here with us tonight.

Twenty members dialled into the Zoom meeting and were brought to order by our Chair, Mr Ray Hill. 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, Landscape and Natural History. Nick has a lovely way of judging competitions. He is fair and unambiguous. He offers feedback giving a full critique of each image. I was able to pick out a couple of his ‘pet dislikes’ such as not liking subjects dominating a centralised position and subjects having space in the frame relative to their size.

The results from Nick’s marking are as follows:

Position	Author	Title	League Marks
1st	Ray Girling	Indian Holy Man	20
2nd	Ian Whiston	Jackal Fleeing Topi Mother	19.5
3rd	Ray Girling	Swan Lake	19
4th	Paul Wilcock	Rachel 2	18.5
5th	Ian Whiston	Wildebeest Fleeing Lions	18

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

For more information about the Mid-Cheshire Camera Club visit our website at www.midcheshirecameraclub.org or come along to a Zoom meeting on Wednesday evening at 7.45 for 8pm. Contact the Club via our Website contact page for Zoom access.