This was the first round of the Print Trophy competition of the season held on October 9th 2025. This round had “Open” as both themes.
For each image I had to choose a roughly defined “genre” with the added condition that each submitted image must have a different “genre”.
My sunflowers
This was my first workshop organised by Leading Lines Events. I was substituting for a colleague at short notice at Sam’s Sunflowers on Hayling Island..
Valentina was holding a sunflower and gave me this wonderful smile.
I selected “Portrait” as the genre . . .
There were 22 images in this Open Round and the score was 9.5.
Chilled reflection
On the lower floor of One New Change are two escalators from the street above. Images that include St Pauls and silhouettes of visitors can be made looking up here. Unusually a wedding party had travelled down and I’d moved over to see them better. Then this lady came down and I caught her and her reflection.
I selected “street” as the genre…
There were 22 images in this Open Round and the score was 8.5.
Summary of judge’s comments
…[] on an escalator, it is a bit difficult to actually see what the colours are [as monochrome] tends to work in monochrome and textures, so you see shadows and textures… She has a very small face, but as a picture there is an awful lot of mess here [in the middle] , your eyes stop and just look at her head and shoulders here
… She has got stuff in her arms, again one thing [another image] where the subject is very small in the frame , we look at the face and we down to her arms , there are possibly two triangles there
… Then you’ve got not quite repeated her reflection there , so that works
… Diagonals are always good , [] I imagine the photographer had quite a bit of fun trying to work out which diagonal to put in the corner
The original images
Chilled reflection
My sunflowers
