I entered my first photographic competition at one of the local Horticultural Shows. We all have to start somewhere and I decided that entering the photographic section of horticultural show would be a good place to start.
The Great Baddow Horticultural Show has a number of Shows during the year and Summer Show has a photography section. There were maximum of 8 classes to enter. After looking through the list I felt there were 5 classes where I could either use existing pictures taken this year or I would be able to take pictures prior to the show.
I selected the following 5 classes:
– Clouds
– The Local Church
– The Beauty of Roses
– Abandoned
– Animal Life
For the Clouds class I already had a good range of pictures to select from a recent shoot at Aldeburgh at it was a great day for cloud formations of the Suffolk coast.
The abandoned class was another easy choice as I has some nice pictures of decaying farm machinery from a photoshoot in Wales.
The Local Church class was another easy class to enter as our village church is very photogenic. So I one Sunday armed with camera, wide angle lens and tripod the pictures were in the bag. A bonus was it was windy so the Cross of St George was fluttering nicely in the breeze.
Animal Life was my next challenge a visit on one of the few dry weekends this year to local zoo provided a number of acceptable pictures that could be entered.
The Beauty of Roses was to prove my biggest challenge. I though this class would be easy as we have plenty of nice roses in the garden. Recently purchase old english rose had just come into bloom. So I thought give it another week and I will have a number of different blooms to choose for the perfect picture. Well the wet weather had other ideas with 1 week to go until the show I went to look at the rose bushes and disaster. The recent torrential rain has ruined every single bloom on the bushes. It looked I was not going to be able to enter that class.
Luckily a trip to take pictures for another flower show presented the chance to take some pictures of some roses that had not been effected by the bad weather. With pictures for my final class in the bag it was time to select the best images and find out if the judge liked the images.
