12 February was the mono competition, judged remotely by Fiona Brims, with Sally reading Fiona's comments. First , our thanks are due to Fiona for taking the time to inspect and comment on the entries. Her detailed comments will be on the "Members only" page, so we can go over them at leisure.
Link to Fiona's own home page.
The category winners were Elaine 's "Power of the wave", Andy C with "Reflections 1", Andy B with "Sign of the times" and Melanie's "Walking the Dog" .
| Category winners | 1st | 2nd | 3rd |
| Street Scene | Andy Bennetts | Sally Anderson | Richard Llewellyn |
| Landscape | Elaine Dowding | Elaine Dowding | Harry Paton |
| People | Melanie Ehsan | Sally Anderson | Alastair Macrae |
| Architecture | Andy Coulson | Richard Llewellyn | Jon Moore |
| Overall Winners | ||
| 1st | Elaine Dowding | |
| 2nd | Andy Coulson | |
| 3rd = | Sally Anderson | Andy Bennetts |
| Best Newcomer | Richard Llewellyn | |
| Highly Commended | Sally Anderson | Railway Street' |
| Highly Commended | Richad Llewellyn | Shoots from a former rice field' |
Reading through Fiona's comments, one criticism that comes up a lot is that the image does not fit the category. This is particularly evident in the "Street" category. It's clearly a good idea to check the definition of the category before submitting. It looks like several of us assumed that any pic taken of something in a street is a street photo. Not so. There should be people in it, doing something people do in a street and there should be a candid element to the shot, though that last would suggest that the subjects are apt to be looking away from the camera, which did not seem to fit with the judge's criteria. (From the 'rules' -
"Street Scene
An image providing an explanation of something happening or people engaged in an
activity in an urban area.")
Like they used to say at school, "Read the question".
I just desaturated 5 colour jpeg photos and compared file sizes, as you do. On average, the colour image contained 14 times as much information as the grey scale equivalent.
Statistically, throwing away 93% of the information in an image is not likely to make it "better" in the sense of a more accurate record. The main advantage of a mono image (at least the only one I can think of besides compact size) is the removal of clutter in the form of unnecessary colour.
A mono image is stripped down to essential shapes and contrasts, like a woodcut or an ink drawing.
It is then possible to edit it to stretch dynamic range and contrast as far as possible, even beyond what was actually there. Whether this is photography or painting , is a decision for the individual. Sally H commented that maybe we don't do enough post editing of images, which may be true. It's hard to know how much editing most folk consider normal for competition images. I crop and sharpen a bit and probably play with the "Clarity" and "Dehaze" sliders in Photoshop, but that's about it. It has been a year or two since we last looked at editing software. Maybe we should do so again?