Southampton International Exhibition with Sue Sibley
Sue, who is chair of the Southampton International Exhibition, showed all the accepted and winning images for the exhibition, starting first with Landscape, then Nature, followed by Wildlife and finally the Open section.
Instead of the usual images with music Sue did a running comment on the images and issues that they raised. As this is an international competition the judges must take into consideration cultural norms around the photographic aesthetic. For example, in parts of Asia there is more of a tolerance to highly saturated reds and yellows in an image than in the UK, and judges need to be atuned to this.
Sue explained how the distinctions work for the La Fédération Internationale de l’Art Photographique (FIAP), the Photographic Society of America (PSA) and the Global Photographic Union (GPU). It is somewhat a complex process but you have to get a certain number of images accepted at credited exhibitions and she offered to help anyone thinking of doing a distinction. You many recall that Dave A and Dave Mc gave us presentations of their successful journey to getting distinctions.
As we have come to expect of the Southampton International Exhibition the quality of photographs on show was very high.
There were successful entries from Dave A, Dave B and Dave Mc – many congratulations to them and apologies if other members had successful entries that I missed.