On Friday, 18th September, we all joined our Zoom meeting to witness the presentation and judging of our ‘My Best of Year’ competition – a traditional annual event with prized certificates up for grabs. But this time there was a twist… this was a competition that should have run back in May and was to celebrate last season’s photographs. 

For those who don’t know, our MBOY competition is usually the final competition in our calendar. It allows Members to select images across all their entries of the year for the ultimate title of Best of Year.

I’ll now hand over to Tony Coombes for a write-up of the evening.

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Review of MBOY Competition, by Tony Coombes

As our traditional Best of Year Competition was not able to go ahead last season, due to the curtailment of the programme for pandemic reasons, we ran it as our second session of the 2020–21 season.  Despite the challenges of not being able to meet in person, we had 34 images for judge Glyn Edmunds to review and as usual the standard was very high. 

Judge Glyn had some difficult choices to make and awarded Jason’s stunning image of a pair of flies top in the Advanced Class. If you had any questions about the anatomy of flies, many are answered here.

Also scoring ten, Highly Commended in the Advanced class and outright winner in the length of title competition, was Steve’s Red Setter Flushing Common Snipe on an Irish Bog. The outcome of the chase is not known, but my money is on the snipe.

Brian’s image looking over the shoulder of a superbly textured Red Kite scored 9.5 and was highly commended as was John’s Tempest Neat which the judge enjoyed, despite his musing on the source of the brown colouration, on which we will dwell no further.

In the General Section the fabulous tones of Ian’s pot maker in Lots of Pots got Glyn’s top vote along with a score of ten.

The two other highly commended images in the General class were Marina’s very well spotted My Banksy and the tranquil landscape Across the Lake by Chris (did you throw a stone to get those ripples?).

It was a great evening’s entertainment with some smashing photos, viewed in the comfort of our own homes and, we noted, along with the odd drop of vino tinto being enjoyed at the same time.  Now there is a thought for the next evening.

Congratulations to Allan and Dave for mastering the technology.  The Dicenta program was reluctant to behave at first but Dave licked it into shape, and I am sure it has learnt its lesson for next time. 

Thanks to Glyn for his time, for adapting so well to the new format and for his perceptive comments.

Summary of awarded images

ADVANCED CLASS:

• Winner: Jason Hyde, Ultimate Flyweight Face-Off
• Highly Commended: John Hodge, The Tempest Neat
• Highly Commended: Steve Williams, Red Setter Flushing Common Snipe on an Irish Bog
• Highly Commended: Brian Chivers, Red Kite Profile

GENERAL CLASS:

• Winning Image: Ian Robertson, Lots of Pots
• Highly Commended: Marina Woodward, My Banksy
• Highly Commended: Christine Gibson, Across the Lake