This month at the Canberra Photographic Society we had a competition night on the first week and a presentation by Scott Leggo on the second week.

Both sessions where very interesting night and credit to those who put in their time to organize these sessions.

The competition night had some amazing images. Ones I found the most interesting where:

• Series of images from India. (A group of members had travelled to Rajasthan, India)
• Series of images from Singapore during Thaipusam
• Series of portraits in large prints tightly cropped
• Series of portraits from the day Kevin Rudd said sorry to the aboriginals on behalf of the country
• Series of images of gravestones.

The judge finished his critique quite early and for the first time contestants where allowed to talk about their images. Probably not the best idea, as it gives the contestants a chance to disagree with the judge in their presence. It kind of becomes like the crowd judging the judge! There was a bit of discussion on the use of Photoshop to enhance images.

The competition was deservedly won by Russell who took the sorry day portraits.

The second week was a presentation by self taught landscape photographer Scott Leggo, showing us some of his work and his approach to landscape photography. A lot of his images where form North East Victoria. He almost went through his full workflow of how he prepares for an image to the final print. End of session was open to questions. I could sense it and turned out to be true, we ended up spending some time discussing Photoshop again

Scott’s message was that people buy images because they emotionally connect to the image. They want to feel the image. Another interesting idea I interpreted was that, the more people take their digital cameras around and click picture, the more they understand how valuable a professional’s work is.

Common theme to both weeks: Boring discussion about Photoshop and how images with emotion attached, win!