For the past five years The Isle of Man Photographic Society has competed in a three-way battle with the photographic societies of Oldham and Rochdale.

Each club submits 25 of their best digital images for this competition.

President Tony Curtis introduced the battle and explained that although the images had been judged earlier in Oldham, the video of the event had been received only a few hours before the meeting, so nobody had seen them or knew the result.

We were in for an extremely good evening’s viewing of the best photographs submitted by photographers of the IOMPS, RDCC (Rochdale) and OPS (Oldham).

The judge, Keith Barber, first told us that he rated images that had the greater impact more highly than others which, although technically excellent, did not have such immediate impact.

We viewed all 75 images with the judge’s comments and 24 of them were rated as ’excellent’ and were then held back for the highest marks. When the best 24 were finally reviewed the Isle of Man had some notable successes.

Eleven of the photographs that scored 18 points or more (out of a maximum of 20) were from the Isle of Man.

The following images scored 19 points for the IOMPS:

’The going down of the sun’ and ’Brown bear with salmon at Katmai’ by Chris Blyth

’In Another Place’ by Nigel Owen

’Last Catch’ by Sue Blythe

’Painted Lady’ by Sue Leeming

Three of these, the best images, were awarded the maximum 20 points.

These were:

’Blood Moon’ portrait of a vampire, by Sue Jones

’The Leap’ a leaping polar bear, by Sue Blythe

’The Bone Collector’, a sinister individual, by Hazel Walsh

Because so many of our images scored highly the IOMPS won the competition by a margin of five points, the final scores being:

Isle of Man Photographic Society: 424

Oldham Photographic Society: 419

Rochdale and District Camera Club: 373

There will be no meeting on Wednesday, April 5, as the annual competition will be judged on Thursday 6th and Friday 7th.

Meetings begin at 7.30pm at Thie Ellyn, off Withington Road, Douglas, and are open to the public with a nominal charge for non members.

New members and guests are always welcome.

Richard Shafto