SACC Interclub Competition - Review

Best Overall Image - "Bedroom Echos" by Ronan Doyle from Kilkenny Photographic Society

Best Colour Print - "Suitcase" by Tomasz Grzelaczyk from Kilkenny Photographic Society

Putting up panels in the morning

Cork Camera Group – Monochrome Print Panel

Waterford Camera Club -monochrome panel

Morgan O´Neil´s panel from the talk

Great interest in Morgan O`Neil´s prints

Morgan O´Neil presented photos from derelict houses

Michael O`Sullivan´s panel from his talk

Our monochrome panel

Our colour panel

Mayor of Kilkenny, Seán Ó HArgáin, who spoke at the awards ceremony and Michael Donnelly, Seán´s former teacher

Mayor of Kilkenny, Seán Ó HArgáin, and Michael Donnelly at our colour panel

Clonakilty monochrome panel, one of my favourites

A portrait photo that I really liked

One of the few abstract photos

Killkenny night life

The 2013 SACC Inter Club competition  had 17 clubs taking part and was the first for our group.
Michael Donnelly and myself went to Kilkenny with great expectations. We did not go to win any trophys but to learn about other camera clubs and see a lot of photos. We were not disappointed.
We arrived late in Kilkenny and had a walk around the center, the main activity seemed to be hen parties. We took a few photos and went back to our B&B.
Sunday morning started early for us as we were expected to hang our panels from 9am. I took us longer than expected and we just could it finish in the 1.5 hours we had. Not much time to see other panels. I just managed to take a few photos before we had to leave the room.
During the time the judges went trough the panels we had the offer of two illustrated talks, interrupted by a lunch break. The first talk was by photographer  Morgan O`Neill. Morgan had photographed derelict house in the last couple years and had a interesting collection of photos to show. He mentioned in the beginning of his talk that he likes photoshop. I you see his photos you know why. For my personal taste the colours were to vivid for the subject and the fact that he re-arranged elements in his photos did not convince me either. This is a no go area for me and leads to staged photos in the pure sense of the word. But for other people it might be ok.
Michael O´Sullivan was the second speaker after lunch. Michael is a pro and  showed work he had done for assignments and his own projects.You can see his work here
A lot of his work includes models, studio lights, make up and dresses in spooky locations. I have to say the photos were technically perfect but the subject did not excite me too much. I could see the photos published in a magazin ( in most cases thats what they were for anyway) but in the long term they had no iconic character like the work of other fashion photographers like Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton or Peter Lindbergh. Anyway, he makes his living from his work and thats the main thing and I can only wish him well.
At 4pm the doors were opened and we could eventually have a look at all the panels. Most clubs had two printed photographs panels plus one projected panel. I have to say that I overlooked the significance of the projected panel. Every panel gets points and the total amount of points makes the winner. I do not know how to judge photos by points but there is probably no better way.
The first thing I had noticed was that all panels had a very high printing standard with a consistent level on all prints. In particular the monochrome panels were very impressiv and had a great scale of grey levels and deep black. While some clubs tried to use most of the space on the panels and had bigger mounts with bigger prints, the Clonakilty club had a very nice display of smaller photos in big mounts that looked pretty good to me.
The whole issue of printing, mounting and arranging a display of photos seems to me an issue that our club needs to look more carefully into. I believe we have a great deal to learn from other groups in that regard.
The photos from the other clubs covered all the traditional aspects of photography. Landscape was again the majority, followed by portrait, sport and wildlife photography. The standard of the photos was again of a high level and would do some newspapers proud. I missed any type of artistic or experimental photography. All photos were taken in a more traditional way. I did only see one photo of an abstract subject and nothing that I would describe as "out of the box". I have a feeling that most photographers still believe in a certain sharpness and colour values. Maybe thats what the judges like too, listening to the comments on the panels they gave later in the evening. I only express my personal opinion here but I see photography as a open and free field and do not insist in those values at all. In my life as a photographer I saw so many great photos that were out of focus, had a crooked horizontal lines or you did not know what they showed in the first place. To mention a few names again I would recommend the work of Ernst Haas, Josef Koudelka or Henri Cartier-Bresson to study.
Anyway on our way home Michael and me agreed that we had learnt a lot during the day and enjoyed to take part in such a well organised event. I would like to thank  all members of the South Kerry Camera Club who took part in the competetion and the preparation of our selection and panels.
The two winning photos above stood out in their simplicity, I can not agree more with the judges here. Lets all start preparing soon for the coming competition in 2014.