For once, the club abandoned all those DSLRs and mirrorless cameras, devoting our late January meeting to focus on images taken by our Smartphones. Well, we got a good deal of entertainment viewing over 50 images presented by members covering all subjects from Landscapes to Portraits, from Dogs to Snowmen to Graffiti and Street scenes. 

The general opinion of all in attendance was of an excellent quality in these images, even when displayed on the large screen – even when photographs were taken at night or in lower level indoor lighting.  The images were taken with a variety of different phones, of different ages and a full commentary given by those members contributing to the show.

Finally, an open discussion on the various Pros and Cons of taking photographs with Smartphones concluded that smartphone image quality is only set to improve further and this needs to be counted into our club programmes for future years.

A few of the images are presented below:-

More images

At the Scottish Photographic Federation (SPF) digital image competition on Sunday 19^th November, Kilmaurs Club took first place in the prestigious Bowie Trophy competition and won the Gold Medal.

An audience of around 200 watched the judging of entries from 37 of Scotland’s photography clubs, with 13 of these putting themselves forward for the most prestigious “Bowie” competition.

On the day, our final entry included images from 8 members. In general terms, the marking was strict with very few images achieving high scores 13-15. However, 9 out of KPC’s 20 images were awarded more than 12 points. Dale Powell ‘s “Wren on a Bullrush” led the way with a top score of 15, and this won himself a Bronze Medal in the “Judge’s Choice” category. Congratulations to Dale!

Our total score was 249 just edging out the other competitors, and there was mounting excitement as the results were announced.

Club president John Sommerville commented “We suddenly realised we were in the top three, and were absolutely delighted when we were then announced as the winners of the trophy!” Thanks are due to Jim Stevenson for selecting our entry – good choices Jim!

The win qualifies the club to represent the SPF at the British (PAGB) Championships in May next year.

Here is a link to the SPF website for a Gallery of our winning images and more details of the results.
2023 SPF Digital Bowie Trophy Winning Club | Scottish Photographic Federation (scottish-photographic-federation.org)

Our first Open Competition of the season was won by Ian Mortimer with this terrific dog portrait titled ‘Mac’.

Charlie Moore from Eastwood Photographic Society was our judge for the evening. In total there was an entry of 30 prints and 50 projected images. The standard of photographs was characteristically high and a total of 5 images were given the full 20 marks. Jim Stevenson and Joyce Robinson achieved the 20 mark standard with their prints. Other top marks were given to two other projected images – another image by Ian Mortimer “First Catch of the Day” and Dale Powell’s “Old Hands” (see below).

But overall, Charlie awarded the trophy to ‘Mac’. Congratulations to Ian, and thanks to Charlie for his constructive comments and wise judging.

more images

Our Exhibition of Prints has now been set up in the main corridor of University Hospital Crosshouse, Kilmarnock. A great selection of 45 framed prints has been provided by club members. The display certainly brightens up the corridor, provide the club with a bit of exposure in the local community, and gives members a chance to sell their prints at reasonable prices. The exhibition runs until the 15^th December 2023. It is really worth a look if you are in that area.

A great collection of 72 images were entered for this year’s Quig Quaich, our first competition of the year. Founder of the competition, Robert Quig judged the entries very fairly and, as always, gave insightful feedback on all the images. His comments are indeed of real value to the members.

Four images scored a maximum 20 points: Colin Robinson’s “Lost Board” (a wind surfer dropping his board); Martin Clark’s “Dunure Evening” (a mono image of Dunure Castle with its reflection in a beach pool); and two from Dale Powell, the “Adult Male Kingfisher” (above) and “Old Hands”. There were also many other outstanding images, particularly in the portrait section.

Each entrant submitted a total of six images from three categories. The marks were then added to give their final scores out of a possible 120.

Dale Powell achieved the top score of 114, and so Dale is this year’s winner of the Quig Quach! Congratulations!
In second place was Martin Clark (110 points), and Kevin Thorne was third (107 points). Well done guys!