The Richard Balter Knockout print Challenge Trophy 2013
Hosted by Rushcliffe Photographic Society-Tuesday 30th April 2013
So, it was with a degree of trepidation that the Outlaws entered the above competition as 2012 champions. Last year 8 clubs entered, this year it was only 5.
The competition is print based with 5 prints per club, the prints are ‘shuffled’ and presented in a random order to the judge, who this year is Bill Hall, from Rolls-Royce Derby PS. If a print is ‘knocked out’ in round one that it achieves one point, round two, 2 points etc, until we get down to an overall winner. Its a great format and really exciting to take part in, wondering if your images will get through to the later rounds and score more points.
The Outlaws entries were :
1.Art Appreciation-Sue Hartley
2.Black Rock Moon-Scott Wilson
3.Evil Queen-Rick Martindale
4.Fire in the sky, Sunrise at Cromer Pier-Chris Newham
5.Possession is 9/10 of the law-Ian Pinn
Reserve; City Chrome-Ben Rawson
The other 4 clubs competing were;
Rushcliffe PS (Hosts)
Worksop & District
Arnold & District
Long Eaton PS
So, round one started and the judge had to lose approx half of the entries, quite tough as there were some very strong images, particularly Portraits and Landscapes (no Natural History). Rushcliffe lost 3 prints, Worksop lost 2, Arnold lost 3, Long Eaton lost 4 (ouch) and the Outlaws lost none! A great start. Round two then saw the Outlaws lose 3 prints (Sue, Scott & Ian), that was painful, Arnold also lost their 4th.
A tea break then intervened and we were off for round 3, Rushcliffe lost 1, Worksop lost 2 and we lost one (Chris) so we only had Ricks ‘Evil Queen’ left in, Worksop were looking strong with a great motorbike racing image that was obviously the judges favourite all along. We lost our final image in round 4 alog with Rushcliffe. Arnold and Long Eaton lost their final images in round 5 and Worksop went on to round 6 with their final image.
Scores on the doors at the end were;
5th position – Long Eaton with 9 points
=3rd position – Rushcliffe & Arnold with 10 points each
2nd position – Outlaws with 13 points
1st position – Worksop with 14 points
Lost it by one point, it was very close and it always seems to go to the club with the top print as pro-rata it does score much more highly.
Thanks to Rushcliffe PS for hosting and a special thanks to Bill Hall for judging, a great evenings entertainment, lets hope for more clubs next year.
Ian Pinn
NOPS Chairman 2013