Location Challenge

On Wednesday 18 October, we reviewed the results of our latest location challenge.

This was the first challenge of the season.

The location was selected this time by Chris Warby – the winner of last season’s final challenge. His chosen location was “Billington Road”, Leighton Buzzard.

The brief and accompanying map clarified that this meant “from Grovebury Road to the Macdonald’s roundabout” plus some adjoining areas. “This includes Victorian houses, Pages Park (with the narrow-gauge railway, sports, gardens, etc), Pages Park industrial units, and modern houses”.

Having spent years walking down Billington Road to take his grandchildren to school from Sandhills, Chris was sure it would provide plenty of scope for several different types of photography.

The purpose of a location challenge of course is to get us out with our cameras taking new pictures. This location was announced on 27 September and the deadline for submitting our three best images was 13 October. We therefore had a relatively short time to visit the location, take, select and process our images, and get them in.

37 images were submitted. And our efforts were critiqued by Colin Mill of MK City Photographic Society, a “prolific photographer” primarily engaged in landscape photography but happy to have a go at almost everything. He is also an experienced judge and a regular visitor to the Club.

During his first pass, Colin “held back” nine images for further consideration. He was unable to reduce these down to the usual five. But after careful deliberation, he selected his six favourite images.

“Factory Shutter” by Mike Kitchingman
“Park Ride” by Paul Needham
“Rothko Visits Pages Park” by Carol Curd
“Happy Seat” by Sally Kitchingman
“Industrial Shades” by Paul Dimitriou
“Sunset at Leighton Buzzard on Sea” by Carol Curd

Congratulations to all the authors. Excellent images!

In addition, Chris selected his five favourite images.

“Park Ride” by Paul Needham
“Narrow Guage Switches” by Tricia Meers
“Pylons” by Graham Meers
“End of the Line” by Mike Kitchingman
“A Lifetime of Biking at Sand and Motorcycles in Pages Park” by Martin Wood

From these excellent images, Chris chose as his winner the snappily titled

“A Lifetime of Biking at Sand and Motorcycles in Pages Park” by Martin Wood

Many congratulations to Martin for his cracking portrait! As the author of the winning image, he is rewarded with the stupendous honour of selecting the site of our next Location challenge.

“Billington Road” fully fulfilled Chris’s expectations and the submitted images spanned a diverse range of subjects and photographic genres. There was railway stuff, buses, cars, plants, industrial shutters, signage, residential buildings, and gates, and more. And there was colour, black and white, and sepia with images of wide perspectives, details and close-ups, lots of interesting angles, and even abstracts.

I wonder what might be in store for us when Martin sets us our next Location Challenge?!

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