Val has continued her good form in the Amateur Photographer Of the Year competition this month. This month’s theme was Macro photography. Val’s image of a snowdrop gained 17th place. The judges commented “By using a shallow depth of focus, Val has isolated this single snowdrop”.
Val was also placed in the top 50 in last month’s round on the theme of ‘Shallow Depth of Field’.
Well done Val.
![17.-Val-Lear-331x500[1]](https://www.macclesfieldcameraclub.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/17.-Val-Lear-331x5001.jpg)
You have to be in it to win it, as the saying goes: although he didn’t win, Brian Law did get a commended in this year’s Stefan Buczacki Photography Competition and two complementary tickets to the Southport Show. This flower photography competition is a regular part of the annual Southport Flower Show. The competition had 4 sections: British Plant Portraits, British Garden Views, British Natural History and Wildlife, all of which were print classes, and a digital class, British Garden/Plant related. Brian said he took the easy option and entered the two permitted images into the digital class the poppy bud image, below, got the commended award.
The subject matter for this image came from his garden and was the result of an accident when he knocked the unopened bud off the plant with a lawn mower when cutting the grass. Brian took this unopened bud into the house left it on the sideboard for a couple of days and took a few shots of it as it gradually unfurled. He used a sheet of white mount board as the background and available light from the window with the camera tripod mounted. The image was processed with Nik Color Effex Pro.
We all have different approaches to selling our images, some have to do it for a living, others aren’t particularly keen, and even if you want to engage, how do you go about it ? Well, until recently I was in the ‘not particularly interested’ camp having heard friends stories of getting only 25p from big agencies like Shutterstock or Getty for a picture when they make hundreds of pounds for it !!- I couldn’t be bothered if its only 25p to see them cream off all the main profit from your hard work, even though Mark Helliwell tried to persuade me that its the number of 25p’s you get that all add up.
It wasn’t until a couple of months ago that I heard of Picfair which is different type of agency that simply turn things on its head – you the photographer name your price (mine are all £20) and the agency add a relatively small percentage on to that price. It seems fairer that the photographer gets the main slice rather than the agency. In two months I have only sold two pictures but thankfully I’m not relying on it to put bread on the table !!
The people at Picfair seemed to like my images and asked me to be this months featured photographer in their interview blog…….here is the link….. Conor’s Picfair Interview
