I have been a member of the
Dublin Camera Club for well over a decade now, and it is fair to say that it is the place where my photography has been growing, improving and maturing ...
The club runs a series of competitions throughout the year for members. These are a fun way of getting your images judged, criticised and "compared" to other images from other members. To my mind, the best way to improve your photography.
Over the past few years I did not partake in many of the competitions, mainly because I was the club's competition secretary and whilst I had help from others at the club, it still took too much of my time.
The main result of that is that I got stuck in the Intermediate level at the club. Well, that and that we had an incredible crop of good photographers in the Intermediate level over the past few years. So, even if I entered competitions, I am not sure I would have fared very well against them.
Times have moved on and I am no longer in the Club's Council and no longer the competition secretary. And I have had a lot more time to dedicate to my own photography and to entering competitions at the club.
I did set myself a goal to get promoted to the Advanced level this year. Best way of achieving that is by doing well in the club's competitions during the year, which in the club runs from September to September.
So far two competitions have been taking place. One, called the "Summer Competition", ran last September and it marked the start of the competition year at the club.
My results were encouraging, winning both of the sections I entered: Mono Prints and Digital Projected.
The other competition taking place is the "Winter Monthly League" which runs from October to February, with finals taking place in March. So it is still ongoing.
Results so far are quite good, having won every one of the four months so far in the Mono Print section and coming in the top three every month on the Digital Projected section.
At the moment I am topping the table in both sections, and, if I do the maths correctly, I cannot be caught in any, so technically I have already won both the Mono Prints and the Digital Projected.
From each of the months, the images marked by the judges in the top 20% get retained by the club to go into the finals in March, where a few trophies will get awarded.
So far, all of my Mono Prints and four of my Projected images have been retained towards the finals.
So fingers crossed!
I will leave you with two of the images I entered in the league, the first one as a print and the second as a projected image ... both of them retained to the finals
