Wow, what a great night for our first open DPI competition. Over 80 entries in total across the three member sections, including 20 or so of the best images I have ever seen in Section B. Well done to everyone who entered. David Snowdon, our judge for the night, appeared hard pressed to select the placed and highly commended images from those submitted, a testament to the quality on offer. As Alex Hamer commented, this all bodes well for Paignton in some of the upcoming inter-club battles as well as in the WCPF and salon competitions that we will be involved with. You can find the placed and highly commended entries by clicking here.

A reminder that there is a WCPF (Western Counties Photographic Federation) event taking place on Saturday 12 October. The morning comprises of the AGM and there is a speaker in the afternoon. Their website has further information, venue details and more.There has been a slight change to the Sleep Trophy Competition this year.  Firstly, we are allowing three entries and not two as it says in the Handbook.  Also these will not be individual images but a composite of three images on one sheet - so individual DPIs are not required. The subject matter is Modes of Transport so get your thinking caps on The last entry date for this competition is 18 November.This Monday is the last day for entering the James Wilson competition and the theme is abstract. Please use Photo Entry to submit your entries. Monday evening promises to be an interesting one with Ian Bateman's talk entitled "You Are The Judge", Worth remembering perhaps when visiting judges don't quite get our entries.

PPC were pleased to play host last night to the thoroughly entertaining Ian Bateman and his travelling workshop "You Are The Judge". With the audience broken down into 9 groups of 5 people each, the idea was for each group to judge the same 20 photos in a tightly timed 20 minutes. As we found out, that is not as easy as it sounds and even within a group, scores could and did vary dramatically. When the results were reviewed later in the sesdion, it was not unusual to see scores, which were out of a maximum of 20 points per image, ranging between 12 - 20. What this demonstrated was that it's not easy judging other people's work, let alone come up with constructive criticism that  helps the photographer move forward. After the judging, Ian asked for the reasons behind the scores from each groups spokesperson. He also outlined how well each image had done in previous competitions. Interestingly, the image achieving the best result overall was one from 30 years ago, a 35mm colour slide of a landscape scene converted to a print. A good image is a good image irrespective of how or when it was taken. An extremely stimulating evening, considered one of the best the club has run by many of the attending club members. A huge thanks to Ian Bateman for allowing us the opportunity to share, even if for a brief time, the role of the judge 

PPC members were indeed fortunate to have an excellent stand in for the unwell Brian Northmore at their meeting last night. David, an experienced and talented landscape photographer based in Kingsbridge where he is a member of Kingsbridge & District Camera Club, treated members to some amazing photography taken at various locations throughout the UK and abroad. His laid back style and amusing personal anecdotes combined well with the colour, monochrome and infrared images he choose to display from the past 30 years or so  A favourite haunt for David is Scotland, both the Highlands and Islands, and we were able to enjoy some stunning images from these locations including mountain, seascape and even abstract images. Another favourite was Iceland and I doubt many watching didn't feel a tug in that direction. This amazing and often alien landscape was beautifully captured in a series of landscape and seascape images. Stunning locations all, and some inspiring and often imaginative images to boot. I'm sure that David will be back again soon and I'm sure we will all look forward to his next visit.