Fading flowers

Last night I went to my camera group meeting. This group is run by a teacher from my boys' old school, for parents who are interested in photography. The group has been going for about 9 years now, with pretty much the same members. I had a feeling something was up and I was right, as last night it was announced that the group will no longer continue in its present format. Life moves on, the teacher has since retired, the parents no longer have children at the school and some are already busy as new grandparents...so it is sad that this has come to an end but we plan to still meet for some outdoor photography but there will no longer be 'homework' which was fun and provided a challenge. It has been good run so it is sad when things come to an end.

While I was at this meeting, I missed my camera club meeting where a judge was critiquing some of our entries for our annual exhibition which is coming upon 6 June. We enter six prints and six digital images, and then the selection committee chooses which ones will go into the exhibition but everyone will have at least one on show. I never realised that the judge would be ranking the images too. Most people submit images that have already been judged during the year at club competitions, so I did not think I would be missing out as these images have been previously judged. However I found out this morning that one of my prints won the best print category (for which there is a cup) and the judge actually chose quite a few of mine to critique, and I got two highly commended images too. A friend who was taking notes of his comments for me said he was rather strict - he is a highly regarded judge, one of the best in the country and an ex-president of the Royal Photographic Society. The image that won was of the Icelandic ponies, which he apparently loved, yet in another competition under a different judge it scored 9/10. Anyway that was a pleasant surprise.

This morning I took photos of my fading peonies, they have gone very droopy rather suddenly (annoying as they were expensive). I also spent ages trying to take a self portrait, as I need an image of myself for my new website, for my drivers licence renewal etc. I tried to take an arty one for my website but it just did not work so settled on a boring straight forward one!

And more work on my website today - I just chip away at it when I have time, doing a section of the gallery at a time.