If you thought the annual Digital Image Knock Out Contest was confusing and unfair, you should have seen the Chairman’s first challenge competition on Wednesday 20 November.

Curiously, the Chairman himself was unwell and unable to attend. (I hope you are feeling better now, Mike.)

The broad idea, as the “Chairman’s Challenge” was originally introduced at a previous meeting, was that periodically the Chairman would announce a subject for a photographic challenge. Members would duly take pictures and submit PDI entries to be judged at a subsequent meeting a few weeks later.

When the subject of “Detail” was announced members were told only that “it’s a bit like the photo quiz back in April”. (For that, members had been asked to stump everyone with a picture of an object taken from an odd angle. That would be projected first followed by the great reveal when a picture from a more normal angle was projected.) Various questions were posed about this latest challenge and members were told “the details are all on the website”.

The website reveals that this challenge is apparently also known as the “Quickfire Project”. And it was envisaged that members would “Show us your PDIs (before and after post-processing) … . We’ll project each of your images (pre and post) for a fun evening, with light critique from fellow members with a prize for the winning image”. File naming instructions required the “unprocessed image” to be designated “Image a” and the final image to be designated “Image b”.

On the big night, however, it became apparent that not everyone had understood these instructions in the same way. Some members thought this was a competition about familiar objects photographed from unusual angles, some thought it was about selecting a particular detail from one image and showing it enlarged as another image (or vice versa), and others thought it was about showing an image without any processing and then showing it post-processing!

And, to complicate matters still further, while some people had the great reveal image as “Image b” (and hence, helpfully, projected second), some had it as “Image a” – which rather spoiled the surprise.

So much confusion and bewilderment all round. Not helped by the projectionist having a senior moment and forgetting to plug in the cable between the laptop and the projector.

Anyway, in due course, and ably compered by Dave Gillow, all the images were projected and authors had the opportunity to explain what they had done and how they had done it and deal with questions. All very illuminating.

But we still needed to find a winner. Not least because there was a bottle of wine at stake for the winning image.

A vote-counting team – consisting solely of David Marlow – was pressed into service. All the images were projected again so that the assembled masses were could choose and vote for (“one vote, and only one vote, each”) their favourite image (or was it pair of images?).

A head count suggested that 33 votes were up for grabs. after all the dust had subsided and the votes had been counted top three images were: