Lucy And The Lens

Tag: #prestonphotographicsociety

  • Competition Prep

    Every season at Preston Photographic Society we have themed competitions. So, in the summer I take my special Lucy and the Lens notebook with the seven competitions written down so I can think about what I want to take and whether I can take a couple on holiday.

    Sometimes this is easy because the themes fit perfectly with my holiday however other times, I can only manage one during my trip.

    Sometimes I’ve been working so much I find it hard to find time to take images for a competition at that moment. So, to prepare I look through photos I’ve collected over several years and see if anything fits if I know I won’t have time to take new ones or as a backup plan in case I don’t have chance to get out.

    I will do the same for any external competitions. I also have to prepare for print competitions which I send off to be printed so I have to give myself enough time to send them and get them back in time to enter.

    But whatever the theme I make sure I take the photos for me and not just for the competition. What I mean by that is that I make sure my personality is reflected in the photos as well as the theme as I won’t take a photo if it doesn’t stay true to me as a photographer.

    When you are looking for a theme or any competition entry you need to evaluate your portfolio or back catalogue and choose your best image. Try to pick original images and there you have it your first entry.

    Don’t expect your first entry to win the competition right off the bat it will take many attempts to achieve that. Also remember that photography is subjective one judge could love your image and the next could hate it. I wouldn’t worry as long as you are happy with it that’s what matters.

    Once you have decided on your image if you haven’t previously edited it go into lightroom and photoshop and make adjustments until you are happy that its competition ready. I’m predominantly a portrait photographer and I like to adjust highlights, exposure, contrast and shadows slightly. But in editing remember to always make the image reflect your own style.

    Finally, always make sure your images are resized to the correct competition standards and that you have read the competition rules beforehand. There’s nothing worse than entering it to be bounced back having not been judged.

    Here are three images that have done well for me in competitions:

    This Image Scored 20/20 in the Novice Competition at Preston Photographic Society in 2016
    This Image Scored 20/20 In The Mono Print Catergory at Preston Photographic Society Earlier This Year
    This Image Scored 19/20 in a Movement Themed Competition in 2018

    And three that have done badly:

    This One Scored 12/20
    Another 12/20
    A 12/20

    There should be a distinct difference between my top scoring sets of images and the low scoring set of images and hopefully this will help give you some ideas what to expect.

    I hope you enjoyed this post. Stay tuned for more.

  • Portrait Nights At PPS

    I think the first step to learn things you didn’t already know about photography is to join a society to meet other photographers like mine. It’s my fifth year at Preston Photographic society and I’d like to talk about one of the aspects of the society that I really enjoy which is the Portrait Nights.

    Originally you had to sign up to this and the coordinator booked a model for the evenings which is hosted once a month and invited 5 or 6 people on the list to join him or her on a rota system. Now you buy the £10 ticket in advance which is a system I much prefer, and these are allocated on a first come first served basis.

    Each evening starts with setting up the studio lights in a makeshift studio setting. Initially on the portrait nights I used them mostly to learn about how to light a subject as this wasn’t something, I knew much about until I started going to these evenings. In a later post I will discuss my tips on this. Since then I’ve done a master’s in photography, set up as a Freelance photographer and spent hours on end in the studio by myself with models and my own lighting set-ups.

    So, for me a lot has changed from my early natural light only portraits up until now with my studio and location work, but I think today could be very different if I didn’t step into these portrait nights.

    Portrait nights for me now are about meeting and interacting with brand new models that I haven’t previously encountered. Yes, I do have repeat work with models, but I feel that working with new models gives you challenges because its like starting all over again. What I mean by this is that every person reacts differently to the camera.

    I’ve been to early nights where the host did a 10 minute masterclass on shooting models and then we all shoot the models by ourselves in 10 minute slots in there first and second outfits, with our own ideas of poses and directions, based on what you want to get out of the shoot. Then the final setup was to create headshots in short 3-5-minute slots.

    Now instead of a master class you take your portraits where if needed you can have input from the other more experienced photographers than you, and the host.  I think this is great because I believe that you learn by doing sometimes rather than watching.

    I then go home and spend time editing my images in lightroom and some of these have gone fantastically in the internal portrait competitions that we have at Preston photographic society. Try and guess which images below are from my first ever portrait evening and which ones are from the newer ones and you should see a difference in the images. If you enjoy this post, please comment below.