Category: News

Tonight (7th January) sees the start of a new year at Llanelli Photographic Society. We kick off as is traditional with a look back at the winning images during 2014 before making a selection on which image is the best DPI (digital image) and Print.

Usually the winner is chosen from the five themed DPI competitions and five Open Prints, but this year we’re including the Special Effects winner in the DPI group and the winning prints from Our Carmarthenshire, Ken Jones and Dave Roberts competitions.

You can review the winning images from 2014 – why not let us know your favourite?

The first week back is also a chance to catch up with old friends and hopefully meet some new ones. If you’re thinking of joining us in 2015 then feel free to pop down to Dafen Community Hall – you’ll be made most welcome. The club is for everyone interested in photography and hopefully this year’s programme offers something for everyone.

Throughout the year we hold a number of internal competitions but in addition we have some exciting speakers joining us during 2015. These include in the first few months – Dave Mason, a Street Photographer from London, Ian Cook who will be discussing Sports Photography and Nigel McCall who will be talking about his Landscape Photography.

A new feature in 2015 at LPS is a monthly studio night. This is a chance for members to get to grips with the studio equipment that LPS has and develop their skills and hopefully have a bit of fun too.

The final DPI competition of the year at Llanelli Photographic Society took place in December and the subject was Night Photography. Amongst the images were night landscapes, in car shots and fireworks. Graham Harries casted his eye over the entries and provided a useful and interesting critique.

The winner, as judged by members of LPS, was Graham with his Llanelli Celebrates shot!

The top remainder of the top six were Jason Dale, Jackie Davies, Dave Rees, Steve Gladdy and Arthur Mallet.

29th October was the date for the LPS annual Ivor Russell Trophy competition – also known as Our Carmarthenshire. Ivor was secretary of the Carmarthenshire ‘Council for Protection of Rural Wales’ and his love of the local area determined the theme of the competition in his memory. Members of Ivor’s family including his wife attended the evening along with The Chair of The Rural Council.

Jenny Hibbert was the judge and critique on the evening and picked a selection of her six favourites from all entries. However there could only be one winner and Jenny chose the following shot of Carreg Cennen Castle taken by John Ellis as her first place.

Congratulations to John!!

Thanks also to Jenny for an entertaining evening and a special thanks also to Mrs Russell and our other guests for coming along to LPS for the evening.

Between the 10th and 11th October, Llanelli Photographic Society held their annual exhbition at St Elli Shopping Centre. The prints were judged by Gary Shinner and he selected the best colour and monochrome prints from those on display. In addition, members of the public were invited to select their favourite images – with one entry winning a copy of the image that they’d chosen.

We’re pleased to say that we had almost 400 votes from people visiting St Elli during the exhibition. The voting was spread across the board and it was very close at the top. However, we’ve counted, recounted and counted again and can reveal the favourite images as chosen by the public.

1. Poppy Love (Jason Dale) – 28 Votes
2. Wild Horses (Netley Davies) – 26
3. The Valley (Graham Harries) – 21
4. Botanical Gardens (Jackie Davies) – 19
4. Worms Head Sunset (Jason Dale) – 19
5. Double Header (Arthur Mallett) – 16
6. Weeping Angel (Jamie Morris) – 15

The top three images are shown below:

Well done to all other members who made up the top six.

A prize draw was also held from amongst all the entries. Details to follow but we can reveal that the image the winner voted for was “Beached” (a shot of Ferryside) taken by Graham Harries.

If you visited the exhbition and spotted an image you’d like to know more about or would like to purchase then please get in touch!

Between the 10th and 11th October 2014 LPS held their annual exhibition at St Elli Shopping Centre. Each year we invite a guest judge to pick out the best images and award “Best Colour Print” and “Best Monochrome Print”. This year we asked Gary Shinner to do the honours. Gary spent some time looking through the 60 images and concluded his judging with a very thorough report.

Judge’s Report

I was kindly asked to judge the LPS annual exhibition in the Elli shopping centre. It’s safe to point out that LPS did themselves proud to advertise their existence and the talented bunch of photographers that they are. The exhibition was well displayed and they even managed to advertise themselves really well and I trust that any new potential members will be interested enough to consider joining them or another photographic club fraternity in South Wales.

Joe Public will invariably choose images that they like for personal tastes and as ‘eye candy’, but the discerning eye of a photographer or artist will and can see things differently. As asked to judge I did find the overall standard very high although colour out flanked monochromatic images by a majority of probably 7-1, but this is par for the course.

I think for most exhibitions with a majority of club’s feel they have to play safe when putting out images on display that may advertise a unique skill set. It did seem that a high percentage of images were landscape or travel type images, but it must be said that these were quite pleasing to my eyes as well, and of a good standard.

LPS reconvened to decide what they required from me, and the end result was to pick a Clear outright Mono Winner & thus do the same for the colour section as well, but including a few HC’s in the process as well. I tried my best to pick only 2 HC’s per category but as the colour section proved to a difficult task.

Best Monochrome Print

I choose for the Mono winner to #54 “Still Standing Proud”, this was a great image of Whitford Lighthouse and shows how photogenic this structure is, and was done very well with a great deal of detail leading into the image central subject, the foreground had great detail & in the actual lighthouse itself, and the convention of breaking rules by sticking the item in the very centre works, with a great vast sky.

I gave out a further 2 HC’s in the mono’s the first was for the #52 “Double Header” – a lovely image showing the good old steam loco’s coming over the 11 Arches from a great vantage point. The other was for the #17 “Mist in the morning” a well captured image of another local image which looked like a high vantage point looking over the valley of the Technium centre in Dafen. Well seen and taken.

Best Colour Print

Now the Colour section was far harder to deal with. In the end the winner I Plumped for was #13 “Wild Horses, a lovely scene with a glorious setting show how fortunate you have to be in the right place at the right time, the horses all placed in the sunlight stripped worked brilliantly, with the recession working towards the farmstead as the base of the mountains, with these huge mountains in the changing light and mist works brilliantly – bravo to the Photographer. Fab capture.

The HC’s in the colour were in the end three images. The first was # 22 “Urban Rock” fab capture of the guitarist jumping up in the air with his guitar with a real great industrial background. #18 Vik – Iceland. Ere feel to this coastal scene with some wonderful colours in the image another pleasing capture on an area we haven’t seen a great deal of until the last few years. Last HC was #57 ‘Rust In Peace’, I saw this image as a well seen image and was quite different to vast majority of images in the LPS exhibition. My, sort of style, in recent years!!

In retrospect, I also found these other images to be up there with the rest of them.

#11 Reflections of the Shard
#5 Front to back
#1 Evening Glow in Edinburgh
#39 Blow
#25 Flyby
#20 Whitford lighthouse
#36 Val D’Orcia Tuscany
#60 Worms head Sunset
#37 Entering Geiranger Fjord

(The above list is in no particular order)

One thing I will say the ethos of an exhibition is to advertise the club, and if you a successful winner during the exhibition then happy days for that author, I’m also pretty sure that on a different day and different judge or members of the public will produce a different set of results.

Thanks LPS for asking me to judge your annual exhibition, if I can be of any future assistance, please ask me, I’ll only be too willing to help out.

LPS would like to thank Gary for his time and feedback. It’s very much appreciated.

Towy Valley Camera Club hosted a three way battle between themselves, Llanelli and Kidwelly on the 6th October. The battle involved showing eight prints and eight digital images from all three clubs – Harry Gardiner AWPF as judge had the honour of deciding which club would come out on top.

After the prints round, Llanelli were narrowly ahead of Towy Valley so there was all to play for when it came to the digitals. The good news for LPS is that we managed to hold our lead and came out on top.

The final scores were:

Llanelli Photographic Society – 299
Towy Valley CC – 292
Kidwelly CC – 285

The individual scores for LPS members were as follows:

Prints

1. A Touch Of Class – 18
2. Feeding The Idea – 19
3. Beautiful Demoiselle – 18
4. A Drink From Grandma – 20
5. A Mourning – 20
6. The Old Chapel – 17
7. Roses Are Red – 20
8. Shepherd in Rajasthan – 20

Digital Images

1. Cave Explorers – 18
2. Cwmorthin – 19
3. Holy Island – 18
4. Nephilim – 18
5. PC 49 – 18
6. Sun Voyager – 17
7. Urban Rock – 18
8. When Duty Calls – 20

Congratulations to all involved, thanks to Jackie, Ray, Carole, Alun and Arthur for flying the flag for LPS at the battle, and big thanks also to our hosts at Towy Valley for a fabulous event.

Llanelli Photographic Society held their fourth DPI (digital image) competition of 2014 this week and the subject was macro. This resulted in a mixture of entries including bugs, flowers, water droplets and kitchenware. After a critique by Ray Rees the top six, as judged by members, was revealed.

The winner was Jennifer Williams with “The Stare”, a fabulous shot showing a damselfly.

In second place was Jackie Davies with Insey Winsey whilst third place went to Alun Lewis “With Love”. Jason Dale had two images in equal fourth place, both showing water droplet images, whilst Dave Rees took sixth place with his shot of a fly.