Last week the Isle of Man Photographic Society held the first open competition of the year.

Open means that any subject was eligible.

There was a good entry spread over colour and monochrome images, in both prints and projected digital images.

We were delighted that Dennis Wood had accepted our invitation to judge the images.

Dennis is an active member of the Western Photographic Society, and is no stranger to judging our competitions.

He gave us his considered opinions on our images, explaining how he formed his decisions, taking into consideration the range of tones in an image, the composition, use of light, the story-telling nature of the picture, the quality of the image and any post-processing.

All sections were well supported, and the scores given were generally high, with no images gaining less than 14 out of 20 possible marks.

The winner in the intermediate mono print section was a lovely print of a train ’On the Embankment’, by Geoff Atkinson.

And the advanced section winner was Ruth Nicholls with an image of old memorabilia, entitled ’Precious Memories’.

In the colour print sections nature images did particularly well.

In the advanced colour prints Nigel Owen’s artistic interpretation of a thistle head gained top place and the winner in the Intermediate section was a beautiful image of a grey squirrel by Steve Johnstone, entitled ’Lunchtime’, which was also chosen as the best print in the competition.

After refreshments and some friendly chat, came the projected digital images.

The judge’s choice as the best intermediate mono image was of a ’Dandelion’ seed-head almost silhouetted against the sky, by Janet Henry, and in the advanced mono section he chose a view of the ’Mountain Road’ by Annette Slater.

Colour PDIs followed, and another Manx image was the judge’s favourite, the Snaefell tram ’Starting the Descent’ with a beautiful view of the north of the island and the distant hills across the sea, by Geoff Atkinson.

In the advanced section, the photograph that stole the show was an amazing capture of an ’Underwater Kingfisher’, with outstretched wings, air bubbles streaming off it, and fish swimming round it.

Dennis awarded it best PDI, and also the best image overall of the competition, by Sue Blythe.

On Wednesday, Charles Guard will bring his drone and entertain us with anecdotes and images.

Meetings are at Thie Ellyn starting 7.30pm.

Full programme details on our website www.iomps.com , generously supported by the Arts Council. We welcome visitors and new members.