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September 2024 4th Print Competition 

The fourth print competition of the year was held on Thursday 28^th September at St James church Hall the home of the Nottingham Outlaws. The print competition started back in March 2024 and is run on a bi-monthly basis. Going into this leg of the print competition Lester Woodward & Lois Webb were tying for first place both on 322 points, in third place was Nigel Stewart (315pts) followed closely by Chris Holdsworth (314pts). Tonight’s penultimate competition could give one of the leading group the edge over their close rivals. 

The judge for this round of the competition was Malcolm Sales, a judge who had visited the Outlaws on several previous occasions. Malcolm started off the evening complementing the Outlaws on the quality of their printing, this comment cropped up a number of times as he went through the images one by one, part of the judging process.

There were two categories for Malcolm to judge, the Open category and the Themed which in this evening was “Architecture”. In total there were 21entries in the Open and 24 in the Themed.

September is the time of year when the Outlaws pack their camera bags, suitcases and embark on a journey to a location in the UK. We have visited many areas, from Norfolk in the east, Pembrokeshire in the west and Hastings in the south. This year we headed north to Loch Lomond and the Trossachs.

As British photographers we are used to all weathers but this year’s weekend weather proved very challenging. Whilst our home of Nottingham suffered a deluge of rain, we endured a blanket of grey cloud for the duration of the trip. It was great to be dry but any contrast for landscape photography was absent. Outlaws are made of strong stuff and were not to be defeated and worked a location to capture images all the same. Some members can claim to have seen the sun, a couple even a sunset. Typically, as we gathered for the group portrait in Balloch on the last morning the weather cleared and the sun appeared!

Every day we all headed out with hope that our empty memory cards would be filled with images, some starting very early as they had sunrises in mind, others with a full agenda of locations that needed to be visited and one or maybe even two members considering night-time shoots. But all had one thing in common and that was to see and photograph Scotland, ranging from its iconic castles, lochs and waterfalls to the stylish architecture and personalities of Glasgow.

There were plenty of opportunities for social breaks, lunches and dinners together as well as evenings where they could discuss the day’s activities over a beer, something the Outlaws looked forward to.

Some of the Outlaws tales of the trip will follow over the next few posts.

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August 2023 PDI Competition

August sees the Outlaws completing their fourth Projected Digital Image (PDI) competition of the year and things have started to warm up. Following this month’s competition, the DPI leader board is now as follows, Malcolm Nabarro leads the way with 285 points, followed by Chris Holdsworth on 276 and Nigel Stewart also on 276 points. Lester Woodward and Ray Andrews both have 274 points, let battle commence. The evenings judge was Gary Langley, a NEMPF competition judge who some of the Outlaws had met on previous occasions. Gary offered constructive comments and liked to “tell it as it is” and score images in his own unique manner.

There were two categories for Gary to judge on the evening, the Open category and the Themed, which this month was “High Key/Low Key”. There were approximately thirty entries in the Open category and twenty-eight in the themed.

At last Thursdays club night the Outlaws refreshed their lighting techniques, model compositions as well as offering encouragement and direction to the all female sitters. There were three models on the night Maddie a professional model, Marion a firm friend of the club that has supported us in this role for the past three years and club member Christine who couldn’t resist the opportunity to strike a pose in front of the cameras.

The members installing the lighting equipment arrived in good time as setting up the equipment & creating scenes for the models takes some time and it all had to be in place ready for the eager Outlaws when the club night officially started.