How many of your photographs could you title ‘Beginning with the letter T’? You can’t just use ‘The boat’ or ‘That summer’ as that would be stretching it a bit. However, there are other ways to do it as judge Rod Fry from Paignton found when presented with 36 images in the club’s recent themed competition. But Rod was well up to the task as he is a highly skilled photographer and judge but not one to let his responsibility come in the way of having a bit of fun with the print images offered up to him. As he said some members had found many ingenious ways to match their pictures to the theme and offered the meeting the opportunity to guess the title before he announced it. ‘Trees’ and ‘Tunnel’ were pretty easy to guess but ‘Transhumance’ and ‘Tea break with Twix Bars and Telegraph Crossword’ were a somewhat harder! But as the evening progressed we all got into the spirit of it and as he said 'we were cooking on gas'!

Amidst all the humour there were some very good pictures that had interpreted the theme well. For Rod the best of these had a clear narrative and engaged viewers by drawing them in to look closely at the image.

The results were 1st to Peter Elliston for ‘Trees on the River Tone’; 2nd to Ted Strawson for ‘Tarr Steps’; 3rd to Polly Knowles for ‘Texting in the Shade’. Highly commended went to Maurice Sadler and Frank Colebrooke.

The Open print competition had 26 images – a fascinating collection of candid photography, still life, landscapes, urban shots and natural history. In his judging Rod offered many useful tips on mounting pictures and post processing as well as providing an impressive knowledge of the work of great photographers who were worth checking on.

The results for this section were 1st Peter Elliston for ‘Young Love’; 2nd Louise Winborn for ‘Life on a balance; 3rd to Dave Dagg for ‘Autumn. Highly Commended went to Maurice Sadler and Frank Colebrooke.