On Wednesday 5 October, we reviewed the results of our fourth location challenge – the first of this season.

The location was selected this time by Patrick Linford – the winner of our last challenge in May. His chosen location was the Network Rail building, aka The Quadrant in Elder Gate, Milton Keynes.

The brief stipulated that this was “an architectural challenge.  Images must include a building or buildings (or a part or parts thereof) within the confines of the location as the main subject.”

Subject to that, and to allow as much creative freedom as possible, all types of images and processing styles were acceptable – including daytime, nighttime, colour, monochrome, texture, pattern, wide view, intimate landscape, and so forth.

The purpose of a location challenge of course is to get us out with our cameras taking new pictures.  This location was announced on 14 September and the deadline for submitting our three best images was 30 September.  We therefore had a relatively short time to visit the location, take, select and process our images, and get them in.

45 images were submitted.  And Alan Taberer of ImageZ Camera Club in Weston Turville – an experienced judge and a regular visitor to the Club – kindly provided a critique of all the images.

During his first pass, Alan praised the high quality of the images and “held back” twelve for further consideration.  He was unable to reduce these down to the usual five.  But after careful deliberation, he selected his six favourite images.

  • “Golden Lines” by Tim Gould
  • “Perspective” by Mike Kitchenman
  • “Stained Glass Windows” by Tim Crabb
  • “Looking Up” by Phil Pope
  • “NR2” by Paul Dimitriou
  • “Blimp” by David Manning

Congratulations to all the authors.  Cracking images!

In addition, Patrick Linford selected his winning image of the evening, with the author being rewarded with the dubious honour and awesome responsibility of selecting the site of our next Location Challenge.  Patrick’s winner was

  • “Golden Lines” by Tim Gould

Congratulations again to Tim.

The Quadrant proved to be a creatively stimulating location and images spanned a wide range of approaches to the subject.  There were wide perspectives, details and close-ups, reflections, distortions, lots of interesting angles, and more.  There was also colour, plenty of monochrome, and even what looked like an infrared.

With so many splendid images to look at, accompanied by Alan’s thorough appraisals, this was a delightful evening’s viewing.

I wonder what might be in store for us in the next Location Challenge?!

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