The three-way digital battle between the Isle of Man Photographic Society, Oldham Photographic and the Rochdale Camera Club is always a popular evening for our members and has been a regular feature in our programme for a number of years.

It is always held at Oldham where a video recording is taken and forwarded to us for showing -and a rare opportunity for us to be measured against two UK clubs, and with a fully accredited judge whose commentary is always much appreciated.

In this instance, the judge was Robert Millin, a member of Wigan 10 (a much vaunted premier society) and who holds numerous photographic awards personally, so highly qualified.

It was an event which we won last year, so a major competitive response was expected, particularly from the Oldham club, who have a number of experienced, top-quality photographers in their membership.

They are the current holders of the GB Small Clubs Cup - a competition held by the Photographic Alliance of GB - and won from a field of 57 clubs competing, so formidable opponents. A brief overview and run-through of all the 75 entries (25 per club) was shown, then followed by a crisp and well-delivered succinct commentary from Robert Millin - each entry given benefit of his very experienced eye and marked out of a maximum of 20 points. The club with the highest aggregate score obviously then winning on the night.

Inevitably there was disagreement on some of the individual marks given by the judge - always a somewhat subjective art, with Robert admitting to liking sports images for example, but perhaps inevitably Oldham proved winners in the end, their ’composite’ images in particular scoring highly.

These are images comprising several shots which have been merged to produce the final image, often a ’character in costume’ against an appropriate background and telling a story).

The ’Demon Dentist’ by Christine Widdall of Oldham, was chosen as the best image in competition - perhaps proving the point that photography today is not just straightforward imagery but that a vivid imagination plus computer skills will help!

Two IOMPS images ’Brown Bear Fishing Katmai National Park’ by Chris Blyth and ’Sea Horses’ by Chris Nicholls gained the maximum twenty points each. The final scores were Oldham 460, IOMPS 424 and Rochdale 413 - and we look forward to next year and another opportunityâ?¦.

Our next meeting is on Wednesday, April 4, includes a presentation by Dennis Wood from the Western Photographic Society.

The society meets at the Art Society Building (Thie Ellyn) in Withington Road, Douglas, with all meetings starting at 7:30pm.

Full membership is £30 per year, with a guest fee entry of just £2.

Meetings are open to the public, and all will be given a very warm welcome.

Full details of our programme can be found on our website at www.iomps.com.

Chris Blyth