Category Archives: Competitions

Black & White Competition – 05/03/2019

The second in the series of six member-competitions, as part of the Annual Photographer of the Year Awards, was held on 5th March last in an extremely well-attended meeting in the Midleton Park Hotel. A recording-breaking 35 entries were submitted in this Black White category. As part of the new policy to help develop member abilities by having external judges review / mark the entries, we were delighted to have the renowned Charlie O’Donovan give members his expert review. He congratulated the club for both the high number of entries and the high quality of the photographs
submitted.

The following were the results of the competition:
Grade A: 1st – Finbarr O’Shea. Joint 2nd —  Andrew Corkbeg and Gráinne Davies. 3rd – Denis Barry
Grade B: 1st – Ray O’Connell, 2nd – Niall Sharkey, 3rd – Paul Stack
Grade C: 1st – Clara Mc Carthy. 2nd – Roseanne O’Donovan Joint 3rd –  Miriam Keogh and Sue Casey.

Click here to see the gallery of competition images. Enjoy!

Click here for the winners’ photos.

Click here for all the results.

– Ray O’Connell

 

Seascape Competition – 05/02/2019

Much of our group’s activity in January focused on seascape photography and, following on from photoshoots at Youghal and Ballycotton and a presentation by local seascape photographer Paul Flynn AIPF, the first of our 6 competitions of 2019, themed “Seascape”, took place at our meeting on 5th February at the Midleton Park Hotel.

This was a printed competition and we were delighted to welcome local photographer, John Finn AIPF ARPS, on the night to judge the 22 entries. Once the winners in each grade were announced, John gave a critique on each image, giving valuable insight and advice from his wealth of experience.

John went on to discuss the process he undertook in achieving his Associateship with the IPF and RPS with his wonderful panel of inverted reflections in the River Lee. With distinctions becoming a major interest for many of our members this was an inspiring discussion, and we look forward to meeting up with John again soon.
Winners on the night as follows,

Grade A 1st – Andrew Corkbeg
Grade A 2nd – Dave Harris, Joe Moroney
Grade A 3rd – Kevin Day

Grade B 1st – Noel O’Keeffe, Niall Sharkey
Grade B 2nd – Paul Stack
Grade B 3rd – Jim Curtin, Ray O’Connell

Grade C 1st – Kevin O’Brien
Grade C 2nd – Richard Hennessey
Grade C 3rd – Rosanne Donovan

Click here for the competition gallery

Click here for more photos from the night.

– Anthony O’Connor, LIPF

 

Success at the IPF Distinction Sitting at Thurles on 24/11/2018

Eileen Upton LIPF, Kevin Day AIPF, and Noelle Lowney LIPF

There was a strong showing from East Cork Camera Group at last Saturday’s Irish Photographic Federation Distinction Sitting in Thurles, Co. Tipperary with six members seeking Distinctions.

Kevin Day, Dave Harris, Fidelma Read, and John Tait were seeking Associateships while Noelle Lowney and Eileen Upton were seeking Licentiateships.  With a capacity entry, judging began at 10 am accompanied by the expected apprehension and expectation of those being assessed.

Kevin, Eileen, and Noelle were all successful while Dave, Fidelma, and John narrowly missed out but lived to fight another day. Well done to all.

– Anthony O’Connor

ECCG ‘Cork’ Competition – 06/03/2018

The image above, by Noelle Lowney, was the overall highest scoring image in our recent competition whose theme was ‘Cork’ and by a clear margin of 33 points to boot!

With another good entry of 29 images, the competition was intense but when the final votes were counted, this is how the top three in each Grade looked:

It was an outstanding performance in Grade B with the top two overall points going to Noelle Lowney and Remi Boron respectively. Grade C also was an interesting finish with Neil O’Carroll taking first place for the second time on the trot while a newcomer to the Group, Jim Corbett,  took second place with a very interesting ‘mini world’ image.

Well done to all our winners and everyone who entered, especially to those entering for the first time.

Click here to see a gallery of images from the competition. Enjoy!

See also:
How I took that Shot – Kevin Day
How I took that Shot – Noelle Lowney
How I took that Shot – Neil O’Carroll
Winners Presentation Photos
Competition Results and 2018 League Table

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.

How I Took That Shot – John Tait

John Tait took first place in Grade A with this shot in our recent ‘Festive’ competition. This is how he made the image:

Having received the usual reminder email, exhorting us all to get our
entries in on time for our “Festive” competition, I began to panic. I
had nothing!…. I had no valid excuse either, as Christmas was just
over, so most normal photographers would have lots of shots of Christmas
trees. Santa Claus. Christmas pud…Carol singers etc, etc. But I had
nothing at all, as I had spent most of Christmas chasing wildlife
shots… Then I had a Eureka moment!

I had been up in Co Laois with Dave Harris, trying to get
shots of a Pine Marten. As we sat in a tiny hide for about two hours,
waiting for our Pine marten to appear, boredom had us searching the
trees and undergrowth for something else to photograph. After shooting a
Robin, a couple of Chaffinches and other small birds, I suddenly spotted
a Blackbird perched high in a Holly tree. The Holly tree had lots of
berries, and the Blackbird was feasting on these. I took a couple of
shots of the bird with a juicy berry in his beak and promptly forgot all
about him, as the Pine Marten suddenly made an appearance. My camera
settings on the day were as follows.

Everything set to manual except for
ISO which was on Auto. Shutter speed would be not slower than 1/1000,
and Aperture f6.3. F6.3 is the largest Aperture that I can set the
camera to when using my Tamron 150-600mm zoom lens. I would also have
set my exposure compensation to +1 or +2 stops, so as to expose for the
bird against the much brighter sky. Without this compensation, I would
have had only a silhouette, and no detail in the bird.

Luckily, I remembered my “festive Blackbird” just in time to pop
it into Lightroom for a quick crop, and a couple of tweaks before
sending it off for the competition.

 – John Tait

Well done John!

Click here to see a gallery of images from the competition. Enjoy!

See also:
How I took that Shot – Noelle Lowney
How I took that Shot – Neil O’Carroll
Winners Presentation Photos
Competition Results and 2018 League Table

If you are interested in photography and would like to know more about East Cork Camera Group, click the ‘Contact Us’ link above.