Melons LRPS

lol I'll try to get the prints up here tonight folks. Working late and going to see a couple about a December wedding so another long day :)
 
Congratulations Alison on getting LRPS. I'm just an ordinary member of the RPS and have just renewed for another year.
 
Congrats Alison! Would be good to see what you submitted, are you going to join one of the specialist groups too?
 
Good job Al - hope those letters are prominently displayed on your website already :)
 
BouncyMelons said:
Just got back from Bath after a day with the lovely people at the RPS. Some absolutely stunning work from some very talented people. I am determined to widen the scope of my photography this year but I am more than delighted that the people pics I have been concentrating on made it through the judging process.

So I'm now BouncyMelons......LRPS....

One small step but one that means a lot to me.
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Congratulations, I remember when i submitted my portfolio.

Pete LRPS
 
OK folks PICS
This is what I submitted and they fell for it.......sorry judged it sufficient for the L :)

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That's a great panel Ali - the stairwell and bride, and the girl in the pink dress are really strong. An easy pass I would say.
 
Congratulations is in order; well done on such a remarkable achievement.

When's the party :suspect:?
 
Thanks folks. It was a complete punt in the dark because I had not been able to get to any of the previous judging days so I was working a bit blind, which is probably just as well for me :)

That one of the girl in the pink dress did cause some consternation with the judges because they don't normally accept blown highlights and half the background in that one is blown. But it's blown for a reason, it backlit and it got rid of some really distracting buildings in the background. It was not so much sailing close to the wind as blowing the fleet away with a hurricane apparently. :) Thankfully they did reach the conclusion that it was a creative decision and not just ham fisted on my part ;)
 
I went for prints Simon and I'm glad I did. I think it is a better way to present simply because printed at a decent size you can see every defect and go back and correct it till you get it just right. There are things that you can see in a print that goes unnoticed on screen until it's projected 4ft x 4ft in front of the judges, by which time it's way too late.
 
I made about 16 prints that were considered and spread them all out in the dining room. (The family were dead chuffed!) Once I got the choice of the ten sorted, I put them on a table and moved them about till they looked balanced. The red of her hair didn't work if I put it too close to the end so that had to be fairly central. I tried to balance the B&W and colour so they were not too clumped. One judge had a great idea that I should have put the two portraits on the bottom row at the ends and flipped one image to they were both looking in. That's the kind of thing you learn by attending the judging days. If I were to do it again I'd definately do either that or a workshop day.

As for the A, that's a long way off............I've seen what is on the wall at HQ!
 
Congratulations Ali.

Link to your panel would be nice.:)
 
Thanks for posting the pics in the layout too :)

Some surprises in there too - funnily enough I have some very similar ones :lol:

But... what are they on about 'We don't do pics with blown areas?' :cuckoo: That would mean few of the UK's top Wedding Pros would stand a chance then :D

And I am surprised you went for a mix of B&W and Colour - the only other RPS peep I know was criticised for that on his 'A' panel

I also agree the layout is 'wrong', or at least not as strong as I'd have liked. When you position pics as here, they you have to judge them compositionally as elements of a larger pic, so all the usual elements need consideration and I do think you'd have been criticised more had you gone for the 'A'

As I've seen some of these shots much bigger, especially my own two, then I know the superb quality of your work and I agree that this is best shown off as prints too - well done :clap:

DD
 
Great stunning images images and I've so much to learn about layout. The red hair/pink dress shot balance each other out, but to me the small boy in blue stands out as the only blue in the lineup so draws the eye?

The top left bride picture is stunning.
I really fancy pushing myself to achieve this, just for personal development. I've so much to learn.
 
yeah blown bits are a no no apparently, there was a lot of head scratching going on with that one :)

I saw a few panels with mixed B&W and colour and the panel Chairman did say it was fine to mix B&W with colour but ANY B&W images submitted should have been planned and shot with B&W processing in mind. There were a few B&W only panels and some of those were truly exceptional.

The little bridesmaid is actually clutching a blue bag which you don't really get to see at this size so there is a little bit of balance there. I totally agree with the skills needed to put together a panel and for anyone considering doing this I would encourage you to go to a judging day and take on board what the judges feedback at the time. It's fantastic feedback and certainly, if I were to do it again, there are things I would do differently.
 
Looks good Alison but agree with some of the comments about panel layout. The flipping so the ends are looking in is a good idea and many panels benefit from having "bookends"

Another personal one for me (but not everyone) is balance of portrait and landscape in the panel which you've done reanonably well but it does look slightly right hand "heavy" to me. I guess some of that is the hanging plan as, I presume, in reality all prints were the same size?

I personally think that laying out a panel (as opposed to a set of images) is a tough challenge as Dave says - it is about creating a bigger picture. I think I started with almost 100 candidates, whittled it down to about 35 that were technically and compositionally suitable and then built a panel from those, rejecting ones (including IMO my strongest image) as they didn't fit the shape of the panel.

It's great to see some of your work and you certainly have a good eye. Well done on the blown highlights one - brave move! If it was on the subject at all (intentional or not) I reckon they'd have rejected it. They're a conservative lot at the RPS!

Not that I know about portraits but if you want any help on layout for any future panel, please shout...

Paul
 
Congratulations, great set you have there. :thumbs:

I'm going along as an observer on an Advisory Day to see if it's something I'd like to do for no other reason than to focus on getting together a collection of images for personal satisfaction and improvement.

But being a landscape tog the one thing I've noticed from looking at other bods submissions is that within the landscape images are perhaps a macro or two plus another "genre" of photography. Yours however are all people based was anything mentioned about this or is more to do with variation?
 
Mine are all people but there is a lot of variation within that. Some are naturally lit, some are studio lit and some are location lit. So there is a bit of skill required in being able to manage all three. There was one submission that passsed with a whole set of studio shots, but the variation there came from low key, high key, head shot, 3/4, full length. Variation need not be about subject variation. There was also a set of 10 flower pics and it almost passed but the last three images fell short so it failed, but it failed on the dip in quality in the last three images, not because of a lack of variation.

It's those things that you would pick up on my attending and I would definately encourage you to do so, there is only so much you can learn from the handbook and forums. Seeing it and hearing the feedback is well worth it and I consider myself extremely fortunate to have passed without doing that.
 
Well done Ali! :clap:

I can't aay I'm surprised in all honesty, I know you work hard at it. You did well to get that bridal shot with the blown highlights accepted though - very brave of you to submit it. Some of the cobwebs must be coming down at the RPS. :D
 
CT said:
Well done Ali! :clap:

I can't aay I'm surprised in all honesty, I know you work hard at it. You did well to get that bridal shot with the blown highlights accepted though - very brave of you to submit it. Some of the cobwebs must be coming down at the RPS. :D
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t'wasn't the bridal shot CT, that's spot on but the one of the girl in the pink dress. She's backlit so the highlights in the background are blown to an extent. There is enough detail in there to give context but not enough background to be a distraction and the exposure on her is bob on. Actually quite a difficult one to pull off technically and yes it was a huge risk on my part to put it in. But then balanced against that is every single white background image they have ever seen shot in a studio with a deliberately overexposed background. It's the same kind of control and my theory on it is that blown highlights ARE acceptable to me so long as they are creatively controlled and not just as a result of a poor exposure. Thankfully the majority of the judges agreed with that theory. Still melted some heads though :D
 
BouncyMelons said:
t'wasn't the bridal shot CT, that's spot on but the one of the girl in the pink dress. She's backlit so the highlights in the background are blown to an extent. There is enough detail in there to give context but not enough background to be a distraction and the exposure on her is bob on. Actually quite a difficult one to pull off technically and yes it was a huge risk on my part to put it in. But then balanced against that is every single white background image they have ever seen shot in a studio with a deliberately overexposed background. It's the same kind of control and my theory on it is that blown highlights ARE acceptable to me so long as they are creatively controlled and not just as a result of a poor exposure. Thankfully the majority of the judges agreed with that theory. Still melted some heads though :D
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Oh right. Well done anyway for swinging it, and I really do like your argument about blown white portrait backgrounds. :thumbs:
 
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