Tony Marriott

On Tuesday we held our annual Iris Overton Cup black and white competition.

Members can submit up to five black and white prints on any subject. Over 40 prints were submitted to the competition spanning a wide range of subject matter.

Our judge for the evening was Tony Marriott of Yeovil Camera Club. Tony admitted to being ‘niggly’ judge. This was because he had awarded points out of 20 to each print and found that there were a large number of even quality photographs  in the 16-18 range that he had to somehow differentiate.

He started by telling us that he takes club competitions very seriously. In that vein he commented that some of the prints were, in fact, monochrome rather than black and white but that he would judge them anyway.

Tony commented on each picture and made remarks about its compostion and quality of photography and printing. In some cases he commented that the picture looked ‘flat’ because there was not enough contrast between the tones. In other cases he pointed out that the composition was too busy and didn’t lead the eye into the picture effectively. But, in the cases where he did like the picture, he praised points like the perspective, the subject matter and the photographer’s creativity and vision.

At the end of the judging he announced the winner to be Michael’s closeup of grass seeds, to which he awarded 20 points out of 20. In second place was Betty’s photo of the Clifton suspension bridge (also 20/20) and in third place Ted’s picture of a mock battle scene (19/20).

Here is Tony awarding the tropy to Michael:

And here is the winning image:

(click to see larger image)

Thanks to everyone who took part. Thanks to Tony for being such a good judge and congratulations to Michael for winning the trophy!