‘Convivial’ might be the most appropriate word to describe the nature of the gathering of the three photographic clubs in the island.

The Isle of Man Photographic Society – formed way back in 1938 – the Southern Photographic Society, formed in 1971, and the Western Photographic Society, established in 1979, met earlier this month for what is often referred to as the annual ‘battle’ of projected digital images.

This friendly, good-natured contest took place at the Douglas Golf Pavilion which provided the hot buffet, much enjoyed by those present.

The unenviable task of judging the 30 submitted ‘open’ images from each society fell to Andrew Barton LBIPP who is well-known for his professional portraiture, wedding, schools, commercial and press photography.

As usual, Andrew set about his task with great enthusiasm and from the outset praised the high standard of all 90 images which had impressed him and had even covered genres of photography he had not 'experienced' for many years.

Andrew was extremely generous with his time on what proved to be an entertaining evening, as he managed to comment in sufficient detail on every image entered.

Andrew, as is in his professional nature, tends to view images from a commercial perspective, and so looked for high levels of contrast to display maximum impact.

However, he still covered all the essential elements of good practice, such as the clever use of depth of field, good composition, cropping, sharpness, and exposure to achieve a strong contrast between blacks and whites.

He was particularly keen to praise the capturing of movement in certain images to convey the impression of speed. The images on view ranged from landscapes at one extreme to a ‘friendly horsefly’ at the other.

In the end, with every image being marked out of 20, Andrew said that the final result had been very close indeed but, after totting up the scores, first place overall went to the Isle of Man Photographic Society, with a total of 525 marks (out of a possible maximum of 600), second place to the Southern club with a highly commendable total of 510 marks and a close third to the Western with a total of 509 marks.

Andrew had also been asked to choose his overall favourite image.

Set such a daunting task, he had reverted to making an almost impossible selection by picking the one image he could ‘live with’, framed on his wall at home, so he chose the tranquil image of Coumeenole Beach (in Ireland) by Jeremy Broome-Smith, one of only six images to have scored the maximum of 20 marks.

The IoMPS next meets on February 19 at 7pm at the St John Ambulance HQ (off Glencrutchery Road) for the ‘nature’ competition to be judged by Dave Salter.

For more information, please go to iomps.com

ANTONY HAMILTON