Camera club again

Last night was my first comp night at Hawkesbury Camera Club.
We haven't been back to Parramatta club at all this year because now Alex is so vocal and active we can't expect him to sit quietly through a judging or presentation. If we go to Hawkesbury club though, Mom can babysit for us and I've been wanting to get Dad involved in camera club for a while.
So last night we went to camera club. We all had dinner together at the club first then Dad, Graham and I went to the comp while Mom let Alex play in the club for a while then took him home.
Hawkesbury camera club is bigger than Parramatta, they have more members and have A and B grades for the competition classes. They have the same small, colour and mono print and slide classes but I'm not sure of the rules for sizes. I was told 6x4" for small print and 8x12 or 8x10" for colour and mono print so I went to a lot of effort to work to those sizes but last night there were all sorts of sizes and ratios on display including 2 entries which were a series of 3 photos. So I guess there must be some rules about sizes which I haven't been told yet.
Oh and they only have set subjects, no open class unless the set subject is 'open' if that makes sense. That suits me because I always try to make all my entries set subject. In this case it's easier because they only have 3 entries per class (must confirm that though because the entry form has space for 4).
They don't have entry fees and they serve coffee!
Last night the subject was 'movement'. There were a lot of waterfall photos and sporting photos oh and quite a few trains though it's hard to see any movement in a slow train :) The entries with 3 photos on the one frame confused me though. It's very easy to show movement if you enter 3 successive photos but that's just like grabbing 3 frames from a movie and I thought it missed the point of capturing 'movement' in a photo.
There were some stunning photos, not always the ones the judge liked either. The judge was the same one we had at the end of year finals in Parramatta and I always find him interesting to listen to.
I entered B grade. Everyone starts in B grade and once you get up to 100 points you then move up to A grade the following year. They have Merit, Credit and Acceptance awards which equate to Parramattas Honour, Merit and Acceptance ranking. It's 4 points for Merit, then 3 for Credit and 2 for Acceptance. So I was sitting there mentally calculating how long it would take me to reach 100 points based on 9 entries a month and a favourable judge :)
I got off to a good start with 22 points but at the end of the night the president suggested they move me straight to A grade. It makes sense I guess. B grade is for beginners and after a year at Parramatta I'm not a beginner but I don't want to put anyones nose out of joint by jumping to queue. Some of the B graders could have been trying for years to move up and it's not very nice for them to have a new person skip ahead. Some of the B grade photos were really impressive too. Then again it's not nice for the B graders to have to compete against someone who won Parramatta's 2006 comp :) Personally I don't like 'grades' because the whole thing about camera club comps is each photo is judged on it's own merit, not against the other photos. The judge doesn't look at all of the photos and pick a 1st, 2nd and 3rd. He looks at all the photos one at a time and decides if each of them deserve an award on it's own. If there's nothing up to scratch then there's no award or if they are all brilliant they can all get merits. So to me having grades just gives people the impression that the photos are being judged against the other photos and that B grade photos are not worthy of siting beside A grade photos. Last night, on average, I was more impressed with the photos in the B grade class and saw nothing superior about the A grade photos. I can see that beginners would probably feel better thinking of B grade as a nice easy start but I still just don't like the whole elitist A grade thing. Maybe it would be fairer to have just the one grade but restrict the more successful photographers to just one entry per class so they have to 'nail' it with one shot and allow the beginners to enter as many as they like for the experience and learning.
Anyway just a pointless rant from me, I'm in A grade now anyway. I don't know if the points from my entries last night will count now either because they were won in B grade. I would have entered the same photos though whatever the grade and the judge would have liked or disliked them the same.
Let's see, I got 3 merits, 2 Credits and 2 Acceptances. So 7 out of my 9 entries placed. 2 Merits in small print, a Merit and an Acceptance in monochrome print and 2 Credits and an Acceptance in colour print.
Alex had a great day and was really well behaved for Mom, he even had a 10 min nap on the big bed with her. He was so tired though he slept all the way home and didn't open his eyes until we were putting him in his cot and then he just went straight back to sleep. Then this morning he didn't wake until midday. Graham says Mom should get a gold medal for wearing him out so well :)
So you wanna see the winning photos?
Well most of my entries I've already shared here over the last week as I took them. Here's 2 I didn't share already.
This is Impact which got a Merit in monochrome print. It was an 8x12" very glossy print.

This is RGB which got a Credit in colour print. Another glossy 8x12" print.

I did a very similar shot last year which I only ever printed as a 6x4". I wasn't happy with the quality of the old photo, mainly the lighting wasn't good enough, so I've been wanting to retake the same sort of shot for a while, now my photography skills have improved. This 'movement' comp was the perfect excuse the get the glasses and food colouring out again and I am so much happier with this result.
Here's last years version, it needed a lot of photoshopping to get it like this.