Tree photography refers to the art of capturing images of trees, often focusing on their beauty, structure, and connection to the environment. It can encompass various styles, from detailed close-ups highlighting textures like bark and leaves to wide shots showcasing entire forests or solitary trees. This genre of photography is commonly used in nature, landscape, and environmental photography to emphasize the majesty of trees, their seasonal changes, and their role in ecosystems. Tree photography can also serve as a tool for environmental awareness, capturing the impact of climate change or the conservation efforts to protect these vital organisms.

Reflection photography is the art of capturing images that prominently feature reflections, typically in water, glass, or other reflective surfaces. This type of photography emphasizes how light and objects are mirrored, creating symmetry or adding visual interest to the composition. It often involves landscapes, cityscapes, or portraits where reflections in lakes, rivers, puddles, windows, or polished surfaces are used to enhance the overall aesthetic or mood of the image. Reflection photography plays with the concept of duality, perspective, and abstraction, allowing for creative and thought-provoking visual effects.

Shadow photography is a creative style of photography that emphasizes the interplay between light and shadow, often using shadows as the primary subject or compositional element. In this type of photography, shadows are captured in a way that adds depth, drama, or mystery to the image. It can involve natural or artificial light sources, and shadows may appear as silhouettes, patterns, or abstract forms. Shadow photography often relies on contrast and strong light direction to create striking visual effects, and it can convey emotion, highlight texture, or enhance the mood of a scene. It is a way to explore and manipulate how light interacts with objects in the environment. 

Weather photography is the art of capturing images that highlight various atmospheric conditions and their effects on the environment. This genre focuses on showcasing weather phenomena such as thunderstorms, rain, snow, fog, lightning, clouds, and sunsets. Weather photography often aims to convey the mood, intensity, and beauty of changing weather, whether it’s the dramatic power of a storm or the serene stillness of a misty morning. It can also emphasize how weather influences landscapes, cityscapes, or natural scenes. This type of photography may require quick responses to fleeting conditions and can evoke strong emotional or environmental messages.

• Shapes photography is a style of photography that emphasizes the use of geometric or organic shapes within a composition. It involves capturing patterns, lines, curves, and structures that form visually interesting shapes in the scene. These shapes can be natural (such as the curves of a leaf or the angularity of a mountain range) or man-made (like buildings, roads, or objects). The focus in shapes photography is often on abstraction, symmetry, or contrast, where the shape itself becomes a primary visual element rather than the object it represents. It allows photographers to explore composition, balance, and form in a creative and artistic way.

Food photography is the art of capturing visually appealing images of food. It focuses on highlighting the textures, colors, shapes, and details of dishes or ingredients in a way that makes them look appetizing and visually inviting. This genre is often used in advertising, cookbooks, menus, blogs, and social media to showcase food in an enticing way. Food photography requires an understanding of lighting, composition, styling, and sometimes food preparation techniques to achieve the best representation of the food’s appearance. The goal is to evoke desire and emotion through the image, making the food look as delicious and appealing as possible.

Architecture photography is the art of capturing images that focus on buildings, structures, and the spaces they encompass. This genre emphasizes the design, form, and aesthetics of architecture, often highlighting the interplay of light, shadow, texture, and scale. It can include exterior shots of buildings, interior spaces, and urban landscapes, capturing both the functionality and beauty of architectural elements. Architecture photography often requires a technical understanding of perspective, composition, and lighting to effectively convey the vision and design of a space. It is widely used in real estate, design portfolios, historical documentation, and for artistic expression.

Street art photography is the art of capturing images of urban art created in public spaces, such as murals, graffiti, stencils, sculptures, and other forms of street art. This genre focuses on documenting the creative expressions found in streets, alleys, and other outdoor environments, often emphasizing the vibrant, rebellious, and transient nature of these works. Street art photography can also explore the relationship between the art and its surroundings, highlighting how it interacts with architecture, culture, and social issues. Photographers in this genre often aim to preserve the essence of street art, which may be temporary or continuously evolving.

Versatility

This competition is held in December each year. The certificates are awarded at the February meeting of the following year. 

Each member MUST have submitted photos in every category specified below to be eligible for the Most Versatile Photographer of the Year award, (up to seven prints or digital (e) photographs (in the case of beginners, eight)). Each member MAY submit ONE image in any one category to be eligible for the Best Print/Digital photographer of each category.  No print or digital (e) photograph will be accepted if it has not been entered at the club for a normal monthly grading competition during that year- February to November. No new Print or Digital € photograph will be accepted for this competition and the monthly competition on the same evening. Prints or digital (e) photographs entered in the monthly competition in December will be eligible for the following year.

The categories are:

Wildlife and Nature (na)
This category covers wild animals, reptiles, birds, insects, marine life, plant life or any geological subject in its natural habitat. Domestic animals, cultivated plants, flower arrangements or still life and taxidermy models are ineligible. Entries that have been enhanced or manipulated in any way are ineligible. Human elements, if present, should be unobtrusive.

Landscapes (ls)
This category includes architecture and general pictorial scenes taken outdoors. The use of human elements is acceptable to give scale , add interest or tell a story. A landscape comprises the visible features of an area, including physical elements such as landforms, water, living elements of flora and fauna, abstract elements like lightning and weather conditions. No techniques that add, relocate, replace, or remove pictorial elements except by cropping are permitted. Techniques that enhance the presentation of the photograph without changing the nature story or the pictorial content, or without altering the content of the original scene, are permitted including HDR, focus stacking and dodging/burning. All allowed adjustments must appear natural. Colour images can be converted to greyscale monochrome. A montage or bas-relief or digital manipulation is acceptable providing its presence enhances the picture and cannot easily be detected.

Portraiture and Figure studies (po)
These are photographs where a human or animal provides the major center of interest. They can include the whole or part of the body. Wild animals are only acceptable if photographed in an environment not of their own choosing, e.g. A zoo or aviary. A likeness, personality and mood of a living subject where that subject is dominant in the image. Portraiture is not restricted to head and shoulders and may include just a part of the face, a back view or even a full length study.

Floral and still life (sl)
These must be the author’s original work taken where the photographer has arranged the subjects in an artistic manner. In this category a bas-relief is acceptable if it does not materially modify the original concept of the picture.

Photojournalism and Sport (pj)
A photo journalistic photograph is one composed on a situation
which is newsworthy and tells a pictorial story without words, e.g. sports, men at work, the type of picture you would expect to find in a newspaper
or magazine, etc. Photo-travel tells a story about a place and its people or culture, and should uniquely identify the region or place.

Altered Reality (ar)
The photographs represent figments of the photographer’s imagination and need not necessarily have any photographic or camera manufactured image incorporated in them. Your aim is to present a surrealistic picture. Any process such as etch-bleach, bas-relief, solarisation, posterization, montage, multiple images or digital manipulation may be used. Generally all photographs using these techniques should be entered in this category, unless the level of their usage is so low as to make their presence undetectable. Pictures in which significant digital manipulation has been used must be entered in the section. All images that are used to create the altered images must be the authors own work.

Pictorial / Open (pi)
This category is included basically to enable the photographer to enter photographs that do not fall into any of the above categories, e.g. pattern pictures. Any photograph may be entered in this section e.g. a second wildlife or landscape or portrait, if those are your favorite subjects.
Beginner’s Open (bo)
This category is exclusively for beginners. It is an open category in which any subject is eligible. Should the beginner choose to enter the other sections he/she may do so, but more advanced workers may not enter this section. The person entering this section must be in beginner’s class up to the date of the competition.

General
Judging will be by a panel of three judges to salon standards.
They will use a scoring box at the December meeting and will score from 1 to 5 points per judge. No comments will be made about the prints or digital (e) photography except about the finalists, if the judges choose to do so.
Each category will be judged separately and the best in each category will be selected. One or two certificates of merit for the runners up can be awarded at the judge’s discretion. An award will be given to the winner in each category.

Most Versatile Photographer
The points awarded to each Print or Digital (e) photograph in each of the seven categories (eight in the case of beginners) will be totaled to arrive at “The Most Versatile Photographer” award. In the event of a tie, the panels of seven Prints or Digital (e) images will be determined on the authors’ past year performance score sheets to select the overall winner.