Newsletter 5 was posted to members just before Christmas, 2001. It is not available on-line, but you can order it by post - see home page.
Editorial
by Footleg
BCRA Hidden Earth Photo Salon Results
Brief list of this year's photography competition winners. (For full list see www.hidden-earth.org.uk/reports.html)
Hidden Earth 2001 - Photo & Video Competitions
A report of the conference competitions by David Gibson.
Gallery
Four full pages of photographs chosen from entries in the transparency category of this year's BCRA photo salon.
In the Hot Cave
Cave life photography in conditions to make your skin Crawl. Not for the squeamish! By Chris Howes.
Digital Corner: Using Your Digital Camera Underground
Chris Howes has some advice on powering digital cameras on those long trips underground.
Editorial by Footleg
It's been a busy three months since I finished editing the last issue of the Cave Photography Group newsletter. The annual BCRA Hidden Earth conference was held in Buxton, Derbyshire during October, and this year I was co-ordinating the photography competition. The number of entries and the standard of photography was impressively high. This made it a most successful competition, but kept me and my assistants (Caroline Goy and Richard Rushton) very busy on the desk!
It was great to see so many people putting their work on display, and to put faces to the names of a good number of our members. I was able to get the consent of every entrant who I spoke to to reproduce their entries in our newsletter. A frantic time was spent during the conference Sunday scanning slides while we had the opportunity. One of the down sides of entering slides in the conference salon is that the delegates only get one chance to view them during the conference weekend. So here for you to enjoy at your leisure we are pleased to present all the winning transparencies, plus a large selection of those we liked that did not quite catch the judges eye.
Unfortunately we did not have the facilities to scan the print entries at the conference, but we would like to reproduce them in a future issue of the newsletter. So if you entered prints and would be happy for us to use them then please get in touch. We are looking into the possibility of producing a specially printed monochrome supplement in a future issue, so monochrome prints would be especially welcome.
On top of helping at the conference, I also had to move house in October, so apologies if you receive your copy of this issue a little late. Many frantic evenings were spent trying to find boxes that a vital part of the computer set-up had been packed in! Luckily I also managed to get out of the city for a couple of photography trips to keep me sane during the ordeal.
Hidden Earth 2001 - Photo & Video Competitions
by David Gibson
As most of you know, the BCRA runs an annual Photo Salon competition, which is held at the national caving conference, known as Hidden Earth. As well as the Photo Salon, there are art and video competitions and this year, for the first time, an AV (audio-visual or 'slide-sound') category was included. A complete list of prize winners, covering these and the other cave-orientated events, appears in the latest issue of Descent magazine (www.caving.uk.com) and on the Hidden Earth web site at www.hidden-earth.org.uk/reports.html.
Here, for the Cave Photography Group, David Gibson (in his role as Hidden Earth competitions secretary) gives a report on the photographic and video competitions. Further information can be found at www.hidden-earth.org.uk/info.competitions.html
We are not sure why, but this year the conference was exceptionally well attended! The number of paying delegate-days was just ten short of 1000. The previous best - not since 'records began' but for about a decade - was the event in Leeds in 1999. The restrictions on caving caused by the foot & mouth disease may have left people desperate to attend a caving event; or perhaps it was just that caving conferences in Derbyshire always seem to be popular? Perhaps the fact that we offered free club stands in the trade hall helped? There were certainly more club stands than usual - enough to warrant a second prize in the 'Club Stand competition.
The photo and art salons occupied a large part of the trade hall, alongside the traders, club stands, SRT race area and sandwich bar. It is not often that we manage to get every-thing in the same room - usually someone objects to us hanging SRT ropes from the roof. But this time, we did manage it, and it added to the atmosphere.
Photography
Back in the spring, I was worried that the lack of caving might result in a dearth of entries to the photo salon, but there was an impressively large entry - not the largest ever, but cer-tainly a good display. Most of the photos were of a high standard but a few were let down by poor mounting. Particular mention must go to Adrian Paniwnyk and Andy Jackson. Adrian entered himself as a 'newcomer'; he did not win the newcomer's prize but he went one better and won 3rd prize in the monochrome print category. Although the shot was not technically presented to perfection, the judges clearly thought he had captured the subject matter just right. Andy Jackson's monochrome portfolio was excellent and the appraisal 'to rival Chris Howes' was overheard!
There are a number of very skilled cave photographers. Some of these 'professionals' make a point of not entering the Photo Salon. For example, Jerry Wooldridge chose, this year, to concentrate on the closing AV ceremony, which featured many of his photos. Other 'professional' photog-raphers often enter just a few photos in one or two categories and this serves to keep the standards up; it gives us something to aim for! Sometimes people complain about this - one person told me he was not going to enter his photos because 'X' always walked off with all the prizes. This is complete nonsense, both literally (I checked the records and 'X' has not, in fact, won a prize for several years) and generally - i.e. the 'professionals' do not win all the prizes. I'm afraid I just can't take whinging complaints like this seriously, especially, as I said above, Adrian and Andy (to name but two), can do so well.
I have said that some photos were let down by their mounting. Another comment that came my way (from two of our 'professionals') was that although it was clear that many people were now using digital printing (around 70% of entries by one estimate) it was a pity that most people did not know how to use their equipment properly. Coaxing the best out of an inkjet printer is a skill that requires nearly as much training as other aspects of photog-raphy. 'Making proper use of the equip-ment' comes under the 'tech-nical' attributes that the judges look for.
This year, the transparency entries were shown in their entirety in a lecture session and not at the closing ceremony. Personally, I was not sure that this was the right decision, and it turned out that not many people real-ised this plan. So; apologies if you were disappointed. Next year the intention is to show the slide entries in a lecture session just before the closing ceremony itself; and I'll try and make sure there are some signs to remind you of this. The reason for not including the slides in the closing ceremony itself is because the confer-ence team wishes to experiment further with a new style of closing ceremony. Having the slide salon in its own slot might mean that we can develop this further too.
Developments & points to note
There are some aspects of the rules of the Photo Salon that we have not fully sorted out yet. This is partly reluctance on my part to tinker with the rules, as I then feel obliged not to enter the competition. Cynics will note that I waited till I'd won a prize in the Cave Life category last year before suggesting that we tightened the rules to prevent people like me from taking advantage and entering a shot of a fossil purporting to be 'cave life'!
Some items still outstanding are guidelines as to how 'thematic' the Premier trophy entry ought to be - both in subject matter and presenta-tion; and what provision we make for lack of entries in any category. I'll try to address these for next year.
We bent the rules in a couple of places. It was not really our intention to allow cave life entries to be submit-ted digitally by email, but the rules were ambiguous, stating 'any medium'. The Fun Shot category is supposed to be slides only; however, none of the entries were very funny this year. Then someone spotted that Pete Glanvill's monochrome print of the infamous 'J-Rat' (Tony Jarrett) looked just like Osama bin Laden. The print was duly scanned and projected as a Fun Shot, to riotous applause.
A few other points to note: I will try to get more volunteers to help on the desk on the Saturday morning. (Does anyone want to offer?) And Footleg has some suggestions for making the process of entering a bit more streamlined.
Some of the display lights were a bit hot, this year - especially for digital inkjet prints! This is something that is difficult to deal with, partly because the hire of display boards and lighting is so expensive anyway; but it is something we are, at least, aware of.
Video
This year there were four entries to the video competition; a respectable number. The winning entry was impressive because of its tight editing and because it had been completed in just a few weeks following the return of the expedition from Greece. The second-placed entry was well received when it was shown at the closing ceremony. The author, USA-based David Socky, has donated it to Hidden Earth, so you can expect us to use it as a 'filler' in the future, when a projector bulb blows for example! The title "We're cavers and we're rescuers" refers to a humorous song, sung to guitar accompaniment, with visuals of cavers performing their task - dropping stretcher victims in sumps, knocking formations over and generally blun-dering about!
The video judges included the renowned cave cinematographer Sid Perou, who ran a showing of many of his own films and videos throughout the weekend. Sid and the other video judges have some changes to the rules of the video competition; and they are keen to see more people taking up cave video filming. Now that near-broadcast-quality digital cameras and PC-based editing software are so readily affordable there is a lot that can be done. Since video comes under the remit of the CPG we'll be happy to support this initiative.
Audio-Visual
This year, at my instigation, we introduced an 'audio-visual' or 'slide-sound' category. Two entries were received. Both entries impressed the judges who thought that the authors' themes were followed tightly and that the AVs "werent just a load of slides with music".
Glenn Jones' entry (using Gavin Newman's old equipment) was shown at the opening ceremony. Andy Pryke's (using Glenn's cast-off equip-ment) was shown separately. I have to confess that even though Glenn made a special effort to set up his equipment for a second viewing for the judges, I still didn't get to see it. Sorry, Glenn. However, I can say that I did enjoy Andy's which, to the accompaniment of Renton's "choose life" speech from the film Trainspotting, (Renton played by Ewan McGregor) told us that life meant caving, and not visiting the supermarket on a Saturday or wallpapering the spare room.
We are hoping that more people will enter the AV competition next year - either with slide projectors or computer presentations. There are a number of technical difficulties to overcome - AVs can take a long time to set up. There are also questions about the rules (e.g. should we have a themed topic) and an interesting suggestion that we should allow a full multi-media category. Essentially, all the competitions are for entertainment, and to showcase the talents of our cave photographers. If you have any thoughts on how we can best achieve these aims, please let me know.
Arrangements for 2002
HE2002 will be in October 2002. There might be a few slight changes to the rules of the competition in order to accommodate the requests of the 'programmers' of the closing ceremony. Hopefully these will be minimal. The entry form will include a reminder that the slides will be shown in a 'slide salon' slot in the programme.
Don't forget - although you can enter the Photo Salon on the day, entries for video and AV must be received in advance. The existing competition rules are on the Hidden Earth web site.
Lastly, please don't be shy of volunteering to help.
Acknowledgements
Grateful thanks are due to the conference staff and technical team. The Photo Salon was co-ordinated by Footleg, assisted by Caroline Goy and Richard Rushton. The video competition was managed by Jon Whiteley and the new AV competition by David Gibson. The competition judges are acknowledged in the table of prize winners on the Hidden EarthWebsite.