Blog

This week (18th February), Llanelli Photographic Society welcomed Dave Mason to the club for their first guest speaker slot of 2015. Dave is a Street Photographer from London and he was in the South Wales region giving a number of talks at camera clubs around the area. The title of Dave’s talk was called “I Shoot People” and it covered a number of street photography themes including events, dogs, covers on cars, The Elvis Convention at Porthcawl and The Birquesh Camel Market!

The talk was excellent!

Highly entertaining, full of great anecdotes and all accompanied by Dave’s Street Photography! Everyone enjoyed the night. Comments from LPS members included “Good images, and fun stories, top night”, “Brilliant night” and “A really first class night with great photography of a difficult subject with really great narrative.”

LPS would like to thank Dave for visiting us and hope to see him in club again in the near future. We’d also like to thank Jennifer at Cardiff Camera Club who put us in touch with Dave to arrange the talk.

By the way, the image accompanying this blog is not by Dave. It’s by LPS member Jamie Morris and was a recent entry from our Special Effects competition. It seemed an apt choice for this particular article.

Next week (25th Feb) we will be holding the annual 5 Panel DPI competition and this is then followed by the visit of our second speaker of 2015 – Ian Cook. Ian will be giving his talk on Sports Photography – we’re all looking forward to that one!

However if you want to see more of Dave’s images or find out more (and do try and book him for your camera club) then go to http://www.davemasonimages.com/.

It’s been a good year for battles as LPS finished in first place in the recent Amman Valley Three Way Battle (18th November). The competition featured the hosts and Carmarthen Camera Club with each club submitting 8 prints and 8 DPIs for judging.

The individual LPS scores were as follows

Prints

1. Dreaming – Joyce – 19
2. Long Eared Owl – Jason -17
3. Anciano Cubano – Arthur -18
4. Self Portrait – Steve – 19
5. Sun Soaked Clams – Jason – 18
6. SW1 – Graham – 20
7. Village Elder – Joyce – 17
8. Sunset – Jamie – 18

DPIs

1. A Light Shower – Steve – 15
2. House On The Moors – Graham – 18
3. I’ll Grant You Three Wishes – Alun – 17
4. Carreg Cennan – John -18
5. Mother – Netley – 17
6. Storm Is Coming – Steve Gladdy -17
7. The Newly Deads – Jennifer – 17
8. The Way We Were – Joyce – 17

Congratulations to Graham for picking up a 20!

In total LPS scored 282 points. Carmarthen scored 273 and Amman Valley totaled 263.

However these battles are all about visiting other clubs and enjoying photography. Our thanks to Amman Valley CC for inviting us and for their wonderful hospitality. We look forward to seeing you again in 2016.

Our final Open Print competition of 2015 took place on the 25th November. Gary Shinner of Trostre CC was our guest judge for the evening and did a fantastic job critiquing and commenting on the eclectic mix of images entered into this competition. The winning image was by Steve Milton and is one of a series called ‘The Unsociable Butterfly’. Congratulations to Steve.

The full top six as chosen by Gary was

1. Anti Social Butterfly – Steve Milton
2. Briton Ferry Docks – Arthur Mallet
3. Paulo Nutini – Graham Harries
4. The Things That Keep Us Awake – Jennifer Williams
5. Bright Eyes – Jason Dale
6. Twilight – Netley Davies

Well done to all and thanks again to Gary for visiting us at LPS and judging so well.

Our final competition of the year is in December and it’s a DPI themed comp – the theme is “Boxed In”.

This year’s 5 Panel Print competition was held on the 11th November. With only three entries submitted it was decided to do the judging in house. Before the competition Joyce and Arthur kindly gave an insight into creating panels and showed some of their work which had resulted in awards. Pete Francis gave a critique on the three panels.

1. Arthur’s seaside panel was a wave of images from a day at the beach

2. Jason’s panel was of a Long Eared Owl

3. Yvonne entered a panel which showed a story of blacksmithery titled ‘Tradition in Motion’. Congratulations to Yvonne!

After deliberations, the members of LPS voted for their winner and Yvonne came out a worthy winner.

Yvonne’s winning panel can be seen above.

Over the 9th and 10th October 2015 LPS held their annual exhibition at The St Elli Shopping Centre. Over 60 images from 23 members of the club were on show. As part of the show we asked members of the public to select their favourite plus we also ask a guest judge to give their verdict. This year’s judge was Peter Owen Jones.

Peter judged the prints and the results are as follows

1. Best Colour

I Wanna Go For Walkies – Alun Lewis

Highly Commended

Powering Up – Peter Francis
Seraphina – Steve Milton
Long Eared Owl – Jason Dale
Laura Flora – Jennifer Williams

2. Best Mono

End Of Mourning – Steve Milton

Highly Commended

Mumbles Lighthouse – Steve Gladdy
Alpine Giants – John Ellis

The Public Vote

As well as the judging we asked members of the public to vote for their favourite images – and these were the top three.

1. The Whiteford Lighthouse – Netley Davies
2. Penllergaer Waterfalls – Roy Watkins
3. Three Cliffs Sunset – Jason Dale

Thank you to everyone who voted. If you’d like to get in touch with us about about any of the images on show then please do so. You can catch more images from LPS on display at The Hub and at Flanagan’s.

A big thank you to Peter for judging, everyone who came by and visited us and to St Elli – as ever – for their hospitality.

This week we welcomed Nick Jenkins back to LPS as guest judge for our annual “Our Carmarthenshire” competition. This competition is for images taken within the county and is honour of Ivor Russell, who was branch chairman of Carmarthenshire “Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales”.

Members of Ivor’s family were our special guests for the evening plus we were joined by Cllr Martin Davies and Ms Ruth Thomas from Llanelli Rural Council.

Nick had a tough job on his hands as there were a variety of excellent images in this competition. Paxton Tower, Llanelli Beach, Machynys, Carmarthen Fans, Towy Valley, Swiss Valley and Betws all featured. However Nick selected “Autumnal Dryslwyn” by Jason Dale as his winner.

A massive thank you to Nick for visiting LPS and judging, thanks to our guests from the Rural Council for their support and as ever big thanks to the Russell Family for joining us on a special evening.

Our next competition is the 5 Panel Print (10th November) and that will be followed by the final print and DPI competitions of 2015.

In 2016, Llanelli Photographic Society (LPS) – The Oldest Camera Club in Wales – will be 125 years old. The club is intending to mark the event with a display of work from some of the original members of The Society. Thanks to the assistance of Llanelli Library and The National Library of Wales, members of LPS have begun scanning photographic glass plates, which are believed to be from 1891, and turning them into digital images. The images feature local scenes, people from the day as well as the photographers themselves.

Joyce Mollet ARPS of LPS said “We are particularly excited about this collection as, already, we have observed images of scenes in and around Llanelli that are long gone and, to our knowledge, have not been previously recorded.”

The images will feature in a Community Display which will be on view in June 2016. In addition LPS will be holding a special one off competition for camera clubs in the local area.

LPS is also hoping that more images from past members of the club will come to light. Alun Lewis, who is heading up the 125 LPS committee, explained that “since we started this project a number of other people with glass photographic plates have come forward and hopefully they too can be scanned and the results shared with the community”.

However you won’t have to wait too long to see work from current members of the club. Llanelli Photographic Society will be holding its annual exhibition at the St Elli Centre on the 9th and 10th October. Members of the public are encouraged to come along and vote for their favourite image.

A version of this article appeared in The Llanelli Star.

Over the last few in-club competitions there’s been a number of images from Cuba that have done very well. LPS Members Tony and Arthur both recently visited the country and have come back with a crop of great images – and it was one of these images that has taken top spot in our fourth Open Print competition of 2015.

Brian Coleman was our guest judge for the evening and as ever he gave us an entertaining and thorough critique. He chose Arthur’s image titled Anciano Cubano as his winner – well done to Arthur.

The full top six was as follows:

1. Cuban Gent – Arthur Mallett
2. Social Butterfly – Jennifer Williams
3. Gone Fishing – Steve Milton
4. Dr Death – Tony Collis
5. Connor Mills – Jason Dale
6. Subway – Clive Martin

Congratulations to all the top six and once again a big thank you to Brian Coleman.

On 14th October 2015 Kidwelly Camera Club held a three way battle competition. This pitted LPS against Towy Valley CC and Kidwelly with each club putting forward eight prints and eight DPIs. The images were judged by Gareth Martin. It was a good evening for Llanelli as we took first place ahead of the hosts.

Prints

1. Dreaming – Jennifer – 18
2. Face Full Of Fish – Jason – 16
3. Gerbera Flower – Arthur -14
4. Self Portrait – Steve – 20
5. Sun Soaked Clams – Jason – 18
6. Sunset – Jamie – 16
7. SW1 – Graham – 19
8. Village Elder – Joyce – 20

DPIs

1. A Light Shower – Steve – 20
2. House On The Moors – Graham – 17
3. I’ll Grant You Three Wishes – Alun – 18
4. Long Eared Owl – Jason – 20
5. Mother – Netley – 15
6. Subway Artist – Arthur – 16
7. The Newly Deads – Jennifer – 20
8. The Way We Were – Joyce – 17

The above gave us a score of 284. Well done to Steve (x2), Joyce, Jennifer and Jason who all scored 20s.

Whilst the competition is the business side of things, the battle is all about meeting other clubs, chatting with other photographers and enjoying the evening together. Kidwelly were excellent hosts and made LPS members very welcome. The evening was well organised and there was also an excellent buffet too.

LPS would like to thank Kidwelly for their kind invitation and their hospitality. Hopefully this battle will become an annual event and we look forward to seeing you all again soon.

The first DPI competition after the summer break took place at Llanelli Photographic Society on 16th September. The theme was set as “From The Hip” which sparked a lot of debate about how it should be interpreted. Some members took it as a literal statement whilst others used it to try street photography with shots taken taken from the hip.

Club Chairman, Ray Rees, offered his critique on the various entries but the top six was determined by scores from the LPS members. Alun Lewis drew first blood and stormed to the top with his shot called “The Gunslinger”.

Second place went to Tony Collis with his beautiful shot of a gallery attendant whilst Jason Dale popped up in third with another gun themed shot. Alun picked off fourth place with a hip flask themed portrait and Dave Rees took fifth with a picture of rose hip seeds. The six was rounded off by Jay Harries with a capture of tourists cut off at the hip in a wine glass.

The Top Six

1. The Gunslinger – Alun Lewis
2. The Gallery Attendant – Tony Collis
3. Shot From The Hip – Jason Dale
4. From The Hip – Alun Lewis
5. Rose Hip Seeds – Dave Rees
6. Floaters In My Glass – Jay Harries

The final DPI competition of 2015 takes place in December and the theme is “Boxed In”.