AV News 196 - May 2014
B o lto n C C A V C o m p e titio n
Keith Atkinson
Our second and final round of AV competitions this year took place on Thursday
21st November, and to maintain consistency over the two rounds our guest
judge was again Harry Emmett CPAGB from Accrington CC.
The first sequence to be shown was 'Windsurfer' by Richard Towell which
Harry complimented on both the clarity and sharpness of the images. He was,
however, unclear as to the storyline as "there were a lot of individually superb
photos, one after the other but with no storyline."
'Alba' by Alan Bromily had images which changed format from landscape to
portrait but the transitions did not take this into account. However the music
worked well with this sequence.
Third on view was 'Amazon Expedition' by Brian White which Harry said
"worked well at the start when the images were slowed down to let the music
catch up". Lots of different species of animal were shown and maybe text to
"introduce" them would have added more interest. Some images were cropped
making them a different size, and again some were portrait and then landscape.
"AVs flow better if all the images are the same size and keep portrait images
separate from landscape."
'Dance in the Subway' by Mike Hesp was "short and sweet" with a good
tempo and transitions to the music however the ending was "rather abrupt."
The fifth AV was 'Iceland and the Thingvellir National Park' by Jeff Griffiths.
Harry liked the clever use of panning and felt the photographer had made good
use of Iceland's constant natural light.
This was followed by 'New York', another by Mike Hesp, which Harry said
captured the tempo and feel of New York. The good use of zooming out and the
deliberate attempt to make a third image out of two pictures worked well,
however he wondered if varying the transition length would have been better. If
you are using text on an image it needs to be on the screen longer than other
images to give the viewer the chance to read the text.
The penultimate AV was by Richard Towell entitled 'Rajasthan'. Harry
commented that the changes of format happened "quite a lot" and whilst he
appreciated the music had a local flavour it "was not easy on western ears."
The last AV sequence in this competition was 'Paris' by Ian Watson. Whilst
the accordion music typified France Harry felt is could have been "livelier, the
length of time the images were on screen could have been varied and the
transitions were too similar."
And now for the results - for the ideas and creativity used in 'Dance in the
Subway', Harry gave this sequence Third place. The "cracking quality" of the
images and the educational value of "Amazon Expedition" put this AV in
Second place. The worthy Winner for the images, transitions and the clever use
of the music was 'New York' by Mike Hesp.
The sad thing is that, despite holding two AV competitions a year for the past few
years with around 8 sequences in each - none were entered into the recent
Lancashire & Cheshire Photographic Union AV Competition!! We hope to see
some entries next year. Eds
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