THURSDAY 25th MARCH 2021
8th Cheltenham International Salon of Photography (2020)
Martin Fry FRPS EFIAP/p AV-EFIAP ABPE APAGB made his second Zoom ‘visit’ to Tyndale Photography Club this season to show his audio visual presentation of The 8th Cheltenham International Salon of Photography (2020).
A Salon of Photography is an exhibition, created by a photographic society or camera club, with a set number of sections. International associations support and give patronage to these salons and also supply a range of awards to recognise photographic merit. Images are judged to the standards set by whoever a club has received patronage from and photographers from around the world are able to submit images into any of the worldwide salons held each year.
In 2020, just over 650 photographers, from more than 50 countries, entered over 7800 images into the Cheltenham Salon, giving the panel of five international judges quite a challenge. 1770 of the entered images were accepted and of those 60 were awarded medals.
A selection of the accepted entries in each of the five sections were displayed in turn, with the images given awards shown at the end of their respective section. Martin explained how this year the judging had to be done over Zoom because of the restrictions placed upon them by covid-19, however everything went to plan and ran smoothly, his production of the five audio visuals was superb with the accompanying music fitting each photographic section perfectly.
The evening began with the TRAVEL section and this was clearly a celebration of photography from all around the world, displaying a wide variety of landscapes, portraits and facets of various cultures.
The CREATIVE section definitely showed a ‘different’ type of photography where the imagination and post processing could ‘run wild’. The majority of the images were ‘marmite’ images – you either did or didn’t like them, but without exception every image was unique. The MONOCHROME section was an amazing group of photographs and they displayed the power that black and white images can give in emotion and texture. The NATURE section as you would expect, covered images from rock structures to fungi, insects to animals, birds to butterflies and even a few underwater shots. The final section was COLOUR and in this section it seemed that nothing was ‘off limits’ as long as it was in colour. The variety of subjects was wide ranging, landscapes, sport, creative and it was a delight to see such an assortment.
The excellent audio visual was well presented and displayed an amazing variety of stunning photographs.
Five of our members had between them ten images accepted into the salon and luckily each had at least one image chosen to be shown in the audio visual presentation.
JENNY FRYER (LRPS) had two acceptances – ‘The Gondolier’ in the colour section and ‘A Dark Wet Night in Bergen’ in the creative section.
ELIZABETH RESTALL (ARPS) had three acceptances – ‘ Girl on the steps’ in the colour section, ‘ Path to the Loch’ in the monochrome section and ‘White Trees’ in the creative section.
GEORGE RYSKE had two acceptances – ‘Enchanted Forest ‘ in the creative section and ‘Vietnamese Monks in Rain’ in the travel section.
MIKE SMITH had two acceptances in the nature section – ‘Little Owl Think Its Bed Time’ and ‘Little Owl Head On’.
BRIAN WETTON not only had his ‘Temple Sweepers’ accepted in the travel section he also won the Travel CISP gold medal.
Well Done to you all!