This was the third round of the Print Competition at Bracknell Camera Club in the 2025-26 season held on February 9th 2026. This was a round with two images allowed to be entered.
Ghost of Jacob Marley
In December 2025 we went to “The Great Christmas Feast” organised by The Lost Estate. For three or more hours we sat and watched a solo performance by this actor of all the roles in A Christmas Carol – including Charles Dickens himself. We were sat close to the front of the auditorium and this was the ghost of Scrooge’s dead partner coming back to foretell the happenings over Christmas Eve.
On another note for this competition I had titled the image “Bob Marley” despite in international salons I had used the correct title. I may have had a disappointing evening but I am sure that it would have been a lot worse if the organisers had not allowed me to change the title at the last minute. The evening’s judge having commented on several other entries’ titles I had a lucky “escape”…
Summary of judge’s comments
… a theatre shot where pretty much everything is out of your control
… I think that you have done a nice job – concentrating on the expression and the face is quite nice
… unfortunately we just loosing a ting bit of detail here we can struggle to make out the chains and on this side we are loosing the chains – this does frustrate me as I want to understand how angry he is
..an interesting shot, I am frustrated by tiny parts of it
… the presentation as a small square is exactly right in the middle of the large mount
… but the image does not have quite as much impact as I would love it to have
.. doesn’t quite work for me, the face is lovely but the rest does have the detail I’d want, the lighting perhaps not helping you with chains?
Jing
On the last day of Valerie Jardin’s October 2025 workshop we went into London’s Chinatown early in the morning. The streets were empty of tourists but full of people stocking restaurants and shops for the coming day. This lady agreed to pose for me outside her restaurant.
Summary of judge’s comments
… a nice street portrait , well caught,
… there are three separate elements hands and then the face surrounded by this collar
… nicely separated out from the background both in tone and depth of field
… she is nicely composed within the image; I would like to see a tiny bit more “pop”, don’t be afraid especially in mono shots to use the absolute full range of tones and even if your histogram just shows we are right over on the left and highlights right over on the right hand – juts push it a little bit further and give it just little bit of sparkle
…because what has happened here she is lovely and we have got the composition and that is really enjoyable and her hands going in different directions, fingers splayed out – I just want see more sparkle or “life” in her face as it is quite tonally flat, it would give more to the image
… there is good connection between the viewer and her and I enjoy that
… needs a tiny bit more processing for me
The scores
There were 34 images in this print round: “Ghost of Jacob Marley” scored 7 and “Jing” scored 7.5.
Tables
RESULT TABLES NOT AVAILABLE FROM THE CLUB
The original images
Ghost of Jacob Marley
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