Printing Shadows

Next meeting we have our annual Print only competition. This year the Subject is "Shadows". Later in the year we have the companion to it with the Digital only competition and the subject for that is "Highlights". If your really paying attention to the programme then you'll notice that there is also a "Trio" competition and the John Hankin & Stan Scantlebury Shields. Why am I mentioning this now? Because when I first joined and saw these were coming up I wondered just what they involved and got a bit confused by the answers I was given. So I'm going to try and explain them to you over the course of this and the next few Blog posts.

Now I very rarely enter prints into any of the competitions, not because I don't like to see my pictures in all their glory, but because my middle name is Scrooge. So if I get anything to do with the print side of things wrong I hope someone who knows better will let me know and I'll correct it.

The Print Competition
In theory you can enter absolutely any size print you want as long as it fits onto a piece of mount board that is 50 by 40cm. The reason we have that as the maximum size is it's the recognized standard size for National and International Photographic Competitions. The size of print that we have found fits best in that size mount is 16 by 12inches, 40 by 30cm. Those are the size of the pictures you most often see when we have a guest speaker who shows their mounted prints. The best place to get your photo's printed? Well a lot of the club tend to use Keynsham Photographic, mention Reflex Camera Club and you might just get it at a better price. There are lots of places that you can use, even the local supermarket if you want. The choice is yours.

Sorting out the Mounting of the pictures is something that I haven't quite got my head around but lots of club members are very good at it and if you ask then someone will be able to help you with it. I'm supposed to be writing a tutorial on that but I've only ever done it once and watched it done twice. So if anyone wants to write it up then go ahead and we'll gladly let everyone else know that you've done a fantastic job.

You don't have to have the print as large as possible within the mount. You can mount a 5x7 print into a full size piece of board. You also don't have to have the board at the maximum size. Any variation is allowed as long as the mount board is no larger than the maximum size allowed. Smaller mounts or small pictures in full size mounts are fine. If the picture is strong enough to suit a different size of mount then go for it.

Of course if you can't for some reason get it printed at the preferred size or mounted then there is nothing to stop you from bringing in a normal print and using that for the "Shadows" competition. Although for the open and external competitions your pictures HAVE to be mounted. So make sure you bring along a shadowy picture to enter on Thursday. Any size, mounted or not. Just take part and have some fun.