Mendip 2018 Photographic Competition & Exhibition - Meeting

Background:
Peter Glanvill invited everyone who had previously entered a photo in the competition to a meeting at Hidden Earth on Sunday to discuss the future of the Competition & Exhibition.
The meeting happened with Peter, Mark Burkey and Jess, Footleg, Stu Gardiner and me present. I took notes so in no particular order:

Category of Photo's
Next year there will be 2 categories for the competition:
? Beauty of caving
? People in caving. 
The photographer will state which category their photo?s go into. (People can be in the Beauty of Caving photos)

Judging
The winner of 2017 will be one of the judges in 2018.
The judges can enter work to be viewed but not to be included in the competition.
The photos are to be sent to Peter digitally as he is still happy to receive the photos.
The judging will be on the prints.

Prints:
For the competition the prints are to be A4 size maximum.
They will be displayed with a white border.
Action: Peter will organise getting them all printed ready for display & judging unless a photographer states they will do it themselves.
Action: Peter to see if a drop-off point for prints can be arranged (Martin Grass or Hunters or Gough?s)
Once the competition is over then the prints for the display can be any size.

When
The presentation to be on a Saturday evening. Possibly at the ?Dig-Fest?.
Action: Peter to check if it is on and when.
The cut-off date for entry will be 1 month prior to presentation date. (to enable printing, judging & display.)

Venue
Cheddar Caves are keen to take on the display permanently as they have a free room by the entrance to Gough?s Cave.
Action: Peter has agreed to speak to Cheddar Caves and arrange for the room to become available. He will also organise collecting the photo from Wells Museum and getting the new display up & running.

NOTE: organise does not necessarily mean do.  Peter would like some help with these tasks please.


Bill of Right rules:
This was discussed as it was deemed necessary to protect the photographers work & possible income.
Action: Peter to email Footleg the Artists Bill of Right rules he has used previously.
Action: Footleg to also obtain a copy of what Hidden Earth & Euro Speleo used.
Action: Footleg to then register a copy for the Mendip photos.

Sponsorship & Advertising.
Action:  Mark took on this job (to get us lots of goodies & advertise the competition in plenty of time ?
It was hoped that the Judging date and therefore ?last date of entry? date could be finalised & advertised as soon as possible.

Age of Photo?s
As long as they are photos from Mendip caves when they were taken was deemed not to be important.

Labels:
For the competition the labels will only show a number & title
For the display a label will be made up containing the Print title; Photographers name; camera details, how/ when it was taken + metadata (ISO F stop etc)

AOB:
I wondered if a voting slip could be left in the room for the general public to vote on various categories.  It is a way of collecting feedback for us the organisers, the photographers & Cheddar Caves.

Action for ALL:  Can everyone please give Peter the email addresses of anyone they think would be interested in this competition or in helping. Messages can be sent via UK Caving Personal Message/email system
 

chunky

Well-known member
Great work Judi.

I will be contacting sponsors over the next couple of weeks and will be enlisting the help of dudleybug who did a great job with the pint beaker design for Hidden Earth this year to create an advertising poster for the event which will include sponsor logos.

My plan is to have these sent to every caving club in the country to try and encourage entrants from all over and also run advertisement in Descent.

If anyone has any ideas to help with this I'd love to hear them.

I may try to get a photography weekend where guest photographers run work shops with tips and trips underground if there was interest in this.

Feel free to add to the thread or pm me.




Sent from my SM-G935F using Tapatalk

 

Duncan S

New member
Judi Durber said:
I may try to get a photography weekend where guest photographers run work shops with tips and trips underground if there was interest in this.

I like this Chunky,  :clap: yes please
A workshop day for cave photographers would be awesome!
I've run a few cave photography workshops on Mendip alongside other events (like CHECC). They have been great fun and produced good results even though the numbers of attendees has been rather low.

The format I used was an hour around a laptop talking about techniques. Then a caving trip aiming to try as many of the different techniques as possible including continuous lighting with exposure bracketing and flash. If the attendees bring camera gear then I'll always try and use that as well as my own. Then back to the laptop to have a look at what people got and share the experience. I usually process one image in Photoshop to illustrate how much difference it makes to the final image.

Here's a couple of images from a couple of the workshops (CHECC and Finnish Caving Society), one with flash and the other blended from multiple exposures with continuous lighting
 

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One key skill that I see photographers struggling with is learning to HURRY THE F**K UP. Perhaps a workshop on expediency would be useful.  ;)
 

The Old Ruminator

Well-known member
MJenkinson said:
One key skill that I see photographers struggling with is learning to HURRY THE F**K UP. Perhaps a workshop on expediency would be useful.  ;)

Ha Ha. I have just had a session with Peter Glanvill. Surprisingly all of the flashguns worked.
 

Amy

New member
Id be happy to share my technique if I am ever there during such an event. Its the fastest I know of and cheapest setup still. MKjenson wouldnt complain!
Will travel for plane ticket?  :tease:
 
I'm only kidding, cracks me up, knelt up to my knacks in cold water, holding still, not breathing, in the dark, hearing the phrase "oh, my flashes aren't firing"!

 

ZombieCake

Well-known member
One key skill that I see photographers struggling with is learning to HURRY THE F**K UP. Perhaps a workshop on expediency would be useful.
Noooo!  Faffing around endlessly with needless gadgets of highly questionable functionality is my only skill!  ;)
Still it might explain the difficulty of getting volunteers.  Either that or the straight jacket.  :-\  :doubt:  :-\
 

ZombieCake

Well-known member
...the ability to fend off incipient hypothermia...
On the last trip (actually quite an easy one to record certain features) this problem was averted by someone having a hand held very bright LED flood light that got very hot very quickly (not one of mine I hasten to add).  The rising tone of voice from bass to tenor to contralto to soprano was a good measure of the increasing risk of spontaneous human combustion.
Whether or not there was a causal link between that and faffing about remains to be seen, so further tests are probably necessary  :)
 

chunky

Well-known member
Firstly:
I've begun to contact potential sponsors and an advertising poster is being created which will include sponsor logos. If anyone is interested in offering sponsorship that I haven't contacted please drop me a PM

Second:
Is there anyone on the forum that would be interested in coming along to a workshop?
It would be great to have a number of people with different styles in attendance as I am limited in this regard as I mostly shoot with strobes.
I would encourage anyone who has an interest to join us, doesn't matter if you've been taking shots for years or have never picked up a camera before. I learn new things every time I'm with another photographer underground so there's always something new to learn.

I'll also put this out on social media but if you know of anyone who may be interested please put this out to them or your clubs.

I'm happy to do more than one session if there is the interest and also happy to travel to any of the main caving regions so just let me know.
 
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