Local Photography Competition

[Mike Farley]

In conjunction with the Croydon Heritage Festival which has just started, the Centrale Shopping Centre is holding a photography competition for pictures taken in Croydon depicting the town's heritage, with a shopping voucher worth £300 as the top prize and an exhibition of selected entries. Full details are at the link below, although the organisers have informed me that the deadline for entries has been extended to midnight on 18 June and the exhibition will start at the centre on 24 June. The judges have not yet been announced, but I am told that they should include local photographer Eric Hands and a representative from the Croydon Advertiser.

http://www.centrale.co.uk/offers/offer/ ... h-centrale

Eric Hands is a very prolific photographer and at the time of writing his flickr photostream has nearly 23,000 images. He must be well on the way to using up that terabyte!

http://www.flickr.com/photos/erichands/

[davidc]

He's the chap from croydon photo blitz isn't he? Wonder why they didn't make contact with one of us!

I wonder what % of his images are any good . By my estimate he's neary at 5% of capacity?

[Mike Farley]

He's the chap from croydon photo blitz isn't he? Wonder why they didn't make contact with one of us!

I wonder what % of his images are any good . By my estimate he's neary at 5% of capacity?

I did speak to the organisers at Centrale last month, but at that time they were talking about limiting the competition to fashion shots, which I did not think would be of interest to members.

Yes, Eric Hands does run Croydon Photoblitz and another Croydon based group as well. He is a former pro and used to be the photographer for Private Eye. You will need to make your assessment about his success rate, but there was an article about him a few years ago in your favourite weekly photography magazine and he has done some excellent street photography.

[davidc]

I checked his site out - http://www.erichands.com/ - and some of his street galleries. I have to say I didn't think his street stuff was all that good

e.g.

http://www.erichands.com/photo_7848339. ... id=7848342

In my opinion, and for what that is worth, taking "street" shots of people from behind or "sniping" using a telephoto does not make good street photography. There's no emotional impact for me in much of the work I saw there. It's clearly just a slice of his work though and I'm continuing to check it out.

No surprise AP featured him then

[Mike Farley]

Congratulations to Mike Day who won one of the two runners up prizes in this competition. Mike tells me that his shot is actually a combination of two images taken fom the same location many years apart!

The winning and shortlisted images are currently on display in the Centrale shopping centre until 7 July.

http://www.centrale.co.uk/events/captur ... exhibition

[davidc]

Well done Mike

[Mike Farley]

I was in Croydon this morning and snapped the display which Centrale had made of the shortlisted entries. Mike's successful image is at bottom left in the first picture.

[davidc]

Looks like she's really interested in those lower two images

[Mike Farley]

My main concern when composing the shot was that she was blocking the one at top left.