I'm going to have a little gloat...

.... if that's ok with you?

Last September I joined our local camera club. It was an opportunity to mix with other photographers in real life, as opposed to mixing with them online. I really enjoy my Monday evenings at the club. We have a laugh, practical evenings, talks (I hate the word lectures) and Monthly competitions, as well as the odd extra competition thrown in for different reasons.

Now, I'm not a very competetitve person... ok, scratch that.. yes I am a very competitive person, and so I always enter the competitions at club.  It made a change for me to be allowed to enter a photography competition as I run The Photographers' Corner (an online photography site) and can't enter the competitions I run there (my own rule - but I set the comps and can see previews of all entries, so it really wouldn't be fair). 

So I entered the camera club comps each month and we are now awaiting the results, due to be announced next Monday night. We have a print category for beginners and one for advanced (I'm in the beginners because I've been doing photography for less than 5 years) and we also have a Digitally projected image category again, beginners and advanced. I've scored quite high, I do know that, but not sure how high compared to the others. So I'll wait with baited breath next week!!

But back to tonight. Tonight was Print of the Year and Digital Image of the year. No beginners or advanced tonight, they were all in together. The evening started ok with my wooly coo shot getting a Commended score in the print section, but that was my highest. Half time break saw me win the raffle (a nice box of cadbury's Celebrations!) and I was also presented with a bottle of wine for coming third in an external floral competition with this yellow rose (click it to see the full size)

And then the long wait while the judge went through each of 90 (ish) images saying what he liked/didn't like about each one. But I am very very happy to say that I did better in the Digitally projected image category. This shot (Daisy Daisy) was Commended...

But my Bald Eagle (having won me 1st place in an inter-club competiton between 7 clubs) did me proud again.

I was awarded 1st place and I now hold the title for Digitally Projected Image of the Year. Aaaaand, I'll get a trophy for it too.. wooohooooo!!

Annoyingly I did hear someone at the back say ... "again?" I ignored him LOL I really should get this photograph printed and framed and hung on the wall. It's come 2nd in an international photography magazine competition, and 1st in two different camera club competitions. He deserves to be on the wall really doesn't he?