Mersea Island Competition Judging

The meeting on Monday 23th February saw the judging of the latest round of the Mersea Island Photo Competition. This is a national competition and Wakefield Camera Club participates each year. All participating clubs submit a number of entries and the collected images are judged. The interesting aspect is that they are judged in each and every club with a different independent judge in each club. This means that each club can see everybody else’s work and hear the judge’s comments. The various judges do not know who has submitted any entry (or for that matter the scores any other judge has awarded) so each entry is judged several times and the marks added up. Then the marks are totalled for each club and as the competition progresses it is only this club score which is published. Currently Wakefield is lying third and it was our turn to host the judging. Just before the judging we had just slipped from 2nd place in the 6-team table to 4th but still only 11.5 points behind the leader, Colchester. You can see how close it was.

The quality of prints and images were, as expected, of a very high standard and it gave many members some idea as to what they could aspire to in the future. The evening also showed a real difference between clubs – not just standards but also subject matter. The judge tonight was John Brady and it was his job to assess all 60 images. It wasn’t made any easier by the wide range of subjects covered by the entries. However John managed to hold the audience with apposite remarks on every image and awarding marks. Everyone was intrigued by who may have submitted what and how the league table may be affected.

At the end there was some fevered mathematics to produce the final scores and the resulting league table. It was the not the best of nights for Wakefield but there are more rounds to come. The scores were as follows :-

Colchester        85
Dingwall           83.5
Hartlepool        79.5
Tonbridge         75.5
Wakefield         75
East Ipswich    63.5

An interesting eveing if not with the best of results.