Atherton & District Amateur Photographic Society

The Joe Jackson competition is more fully named "The Joe Jackson Straight Out of Camera Natural Landscape Competition" and last night at the club we thrashed out just what was intended by Joe and what a natural landscape might be.

Let's look at the consensus so that we can aim this year's competition more accurately into what it was intended to be.

1. Images must be straight out of camera JPEG files. No cropping, no post production.

2. As the intention is to simulate shooting a slide film image, where what you take is exactly what you get, you can choose your "film", so JPEG settings such as Natural, Vivid, Portrait, etc. can be applied. Also these parameters can be adjusted to taste, such as Saturation, Contrast and Sharpness. All these things are akin to choosing what type of film we might have bought and are applied before we press the shutter button.

3. Any techniques we apply should be at the taking point, such as putting filters on the front of the lens.

4. As there will be a single exposure only, no HDR, not even in-camera.

5. Images are sent to me and I will resize them only for projection. I will not alter anything, nor apply any sharpening. Five images can be entered.

So that's the specification, but what about the subject matter?

6. The subject is the Natural Landscape. Seascapes are included. Urban landscapes are not eligible. Man made elements such as buildings can be included, but they must be a very minor part of the image and not the main subject. As our discussion showed, there are potentially lots of borderline situations, but if we remember the spirit of what Joe intended then that can be our guide. It was also suggested that if there were any man made parts to the image we could ask ourselves if they were removed would we still have shot the image. That could help define whether or not they were a major ingredient or not.

Some images as examples. First, three that are not eligible.
And three that fit the competition.
Hope that helps, any questions, please ask!

Some more examples that were agreed were in line with the competition rules.

Hi

It was really good last night because it gave us a really good sense of what this competition is all about and gave everyone an opportunity to ask questions or put their opinions forward. Seeing some good and bad examples of what a Natural Landscape is or isn't was really useful.

I think we should do the same for the Record section as many of those are HDR's and the subject matter can be a bit iffy, in my opinion these should not be included in the competition because the real Record images, done in the right way, get overlooked which is a shame.

So a big thumbs up for the concept of last night.

Tracey

Thanks for that Tracey. I'll have a word with John Hardman and see if there's a slot that we can use to fit in something similar on the Record section in particular.

Really helpful as I wasn't able to make it to the meeting.
Thanks John

I recall a discussion at the meeting about whether rural canal images would be eligible or not but I can't remember the outcome. A canal is obviously man made and I am not thinking castlefield, locks, canal boats or buildings but there are plenty of stretches of the Leeds Liverpool which merge with the landscape.

When all is said and done there are no natural landcapes in the UK with the possible exception of the Floe country in the extreme north, all are modified by man in some way.

My view would be that a canal scene that works like a river landscape should be fine.

I take your point on that Gordon, there are very few places left in the UK that could technically be regarded as the natural landscape, even on the most remote Scottish islands.

However, we've got the essence I think of what Joe was after in his competition, the open landscape that we now regard as natural, that is, not showing the influence of mankind directly. As much as possible......

As regards canalscapes, I'd regard the canal as part of the landscape, but it perhaps shouldn't be the main point of it. Somebody suggested that a good test would be "Would I have taken this image if the feature shown wasn't there?"

I won't be throwing out images with too high a sensitivity though, so hopefully there won't be too many problems. If I'm in doubt about an image I will discuss it with the author so we can reach a consensus.