Our first round of the 2008/9 Photographer of the Year competition was hotly contested with a large number of entries, including many from new members. Congratulations to everyone who took part!
One of last year's new members, Aida Beslagic, took 5th place with Honeymoon Sunset - a gorgeous view of a tropical sky. Mick Finn's Fiery Skies earned him 4th place - a stunning Hague cityscape contrasting the futuristic buildings in the city centre with the timeless sunset. Susan McKinley captured the wonderful texture of clouds at sunset over the beach at Ixtapa to earn her 3rd place. Mick Finn completed a succesful night by grabbing second place with his other entry, Still Colour, featuring a beautiful peaceful scene that could also have featured in our next round on Reflections! Finally, 1st place was taken by POTY veteran Al Borrelli with Reflected Sunset. His original take on the theme certainly grabbed everyone's attention, and was perhaps another shot that could also have featured strongly in the Reflections round!

Round 2 of the POTY, on the subject of reflections, was clearly an inspiring round for our members, with so many photos entered that we struggled to find space to display them all! We saw everything from classic landscapes with mirror-like lakes, to glittering pieces of architecture, to the small glinting details in the insect world.
Peter Theakston took first place with "Amsterdam Reflected", which caught the eye with its bright colours and almost surreal quality to the reflection.
Mick Finn's "Gondola" earned second place, with rich colours and a pleasing swirl to the reflections he captured in the water.
Jonathan Abshire was third with "Amsterdam Reflected in Colour", with a clever juxtaposition of the black and white background which hints at past times, set against the colourful, distinctive reflection of present-day Amsterdam.
Jeremy Henderson's "Jokulsarlon" earned him his first POTY points in fourth place: a gorgeous, serene landscape that captures the magic and timeless beauty of Iceland.
Marloes Bongers captured fifth place with "Fin". As Marloes explains: "This is a picture of my grandfather, only minutes after he died. The reflection in the window is partly the garden (earth) and partly sky (heaven)". Wow. It�s hard to imagine we'll see another photo in the POTY with such emotional impact as that.
Well done to all the winners, and indeed to everyone who participated to make this yet another hotly-contested and inspiring round.

Round 3 of the PoTY competition, on "Self-Portraits", posed a new kind of challenge. Self-portraits are difficult, of that there can be no doubt. Of course, you have technical issues to face, such as achieving good composition and focus when you are on the wrong side of the camera. This requires lots of trial and error, but with patience you can persevere. But what about the potentially more difficult issue of creating something that is original and eye-catching, with you as the main subject? It's certainly not easy, but the entries we saw in this round proved yet again that we have great talent and creativity in our club! Marloes Bongers scored 2 points for 5th place with "Disco Dip Me". A good example of how a simple prop or detail can create real interest in a photo. Jonathan Abshire earned 4 points for 4th place with his "American in Amsterdam", which showed that self-portraits need not always be a head-shot taken at eye-level with a (short) telephoto lens - in fact he broke almost all the "rules" to great effect here! (Remember the rules are there to be broken sometimes!) Al Borrelli took 6 points and 3rd place with "Half", utilizing daring composition and interesting processing to create a striking image. Aida Beslagic was runner-up with 8 points for "Thinking of You". Once again we see that original composition, unusual eye-catching details (make-up), and creative use of light can really help to create an image that stands out. Jonathan Abshire completed a successful night in the PoTY by storming home with first place and 10 points for "Water is Life". As the title suggests, water is the key here. This detail really makes the photo grab the viewer's attention, and was accordingly voted for in huge numbers! Congratulations to Jonathan and indeed to all participants.

Round 4 of the PoTY competition, on "One Colour", was yet another challenge that our members rose to, producing inspiring and original images. Carolina Sanchez-Monge scored 2 points for 5th place with "Girl Reflected in Water" - an intriguing photo featuring a selective-colour cut-out processing technique. Barbora Klarova took 4 points for 4th place with "Red Smile", which utilized the punchy, attention-grabbing quality of the colour red to pull the viewer into the composition. Pete Theakston took 6 points for 3rd place with "Orange Arch", which features a rich orange hue and a pleasing composition that draws the eye in via the converging lines and repeating arches. Meliha Eras was runner-up with 8 points for "Yellow". The key to the success of this image is the very shallow depth of field, allowing the eye to settle on the chosen subject. Jonathan Abshire made it two POTY round wins in a row with "Shades of a White Cat". Here the pleasing composition and clever mirroring of light and shadow in the background and subject make for a wonderful and original photo. Congratulations again to Jonathan and everyone who took part in yet another round full of eye-catching photos.

Round 5, and things are beginning to hot up in our search for our Photographer of the Year! This round, on "Motion", posed a new kind of challenge. What is a good subject for "motion"? A sports scene, wildlife in action, fast moving vehicles, people walking though a city, or something more abstract? These are all possible, and the choices are endless. Perhaps the most important creative decision you will have to take, though, is: how can you convey motion in an image which - after all - can't move? How is it that some photos seem to capture a sense of movement even better than the moving images of video? Do you want to use a slow shutter speed to capture the blur of movement? Do you want to use the panning technique to keep the object in focus and convey the motion through the blurred background? Or do you want to freeze high-speed action and keep everything in the image sharp? Again, these are all possible options: it's up to you to make a conscious creative decision, to have a clear idea of what you want to say to the viewer, and how. As we see with our winners here, finding the right balance between deliberate blur and sharp focus, and knowing where, when and how to put these elements into your shot, will make you stand out as a skilled, creative photographer. So without further ado, here were our top 5 photos in this round: Al Borrelli took 2 and 4 points for 5th and 4th place, with two very different photos. In "Dizzy", by placing himself actually on the playground ride with the girl, he was able to spin around with her, and using a relatively slow shutter speed allowed him to get a motion-blur in the background whilst keeping the subject sharp. Dreamy, surreal colours enhance the dizzying feel! Meanwhile the "Night Tram" beautifully captures the tram's motion with a different technique - setting the camera on a tripod to keep it rock-steady and using a long exposure turns the tram into a ghostly swirl, nicely emphasized by the sweeping bend it is traveling around and contrasted against the sharp lights of the Scheveningen night scene. Lena Ternovec earned 6 points and 3rd place for "Steam" - a perfect example of how even a more abstract subject can convey a sense of motion when executed carefully. If you try to visualize how shorter or longer shutter speeds would have changed this image, you will see that this is the crucial creative decision to take in such shots. Bringing in 8 points for 2nd place, Carolina Sanchez-Monge's "Jumping on the Bed" is a delightful, fun shot that captures the spirit of childhood excitement. Here we see the subjects in relatively sharp focus, with just enough blur to convey the movement but still allowing us to clearly see the facial expressions of delight. Again, getting the right shutter speed was very important here. The fun of this image is enhanced by the balloons, but perhaps most of all by the fact that the kids are jumping ON THE BED - it's usually not allowed, which is precisely why the inner child in all of us knows just how fun it is! This round's winner, for 10 points, was Dave Mercer with his shot of a flock of birds in flight. In this photo, the sense of motion is conveyed in a more subtle way. There is no great blurring on the wings, and no blurred background. So where does the sense of movement come from? The answer is that Dave captured the close-knit, yet slightly chaotic pattern of the flock as a whole. Each bird seems to be moving at a slightly different angle - an individual, yet at the same time just one of a great number in a group. The result is a sense of their jumbled, flitting movement, which somehow comes together to create a single moving entity. If Dave had zoomed in on just one of these birds and used the same shutter speed, we would have seen just that single bird frozen in mid-air, somehow meaningless, and an altogether very different image that wouldn't have the same atmosphere. And of course this wonderful natural atmosphere is greatly enhanced by the landscape, with the trees shrouded in a dreamy fog. So congratulations to everyone - a great demonstration all round of how motion can be photographed in many different ways.

Round 6 of the competition, Out of the Crowd, brought us some fascinating and delightfully quirky images. Carolina Sachez-Monge took 5th place and two points with "Look", which does indeed invite the viewer to look closely at this array of human eyes to pick out the odd-one-out. Jonathan Abshire earned four points and 4th place with a wonderful candid capture entitled "Everyone Needs an Experienced Guide", an amusing and at the same time heart-warming image. 3rd place and six points went to Al Borrelli for "Middle Man", cleverly creating a crowd out of a single person and adding a rather surreal element in the shape of a Mexican wrestling mask... Jia Wang's "Concentration" took 2nd place and eight points for the fantastic use of geometric lines, shadows, and repetition broken only by the sole person lost in concentration. The star of the show in this round was Trevor Simpson's "May I Come In?". He earned first place and 10 points for this clever and entertaining photo that has a number of levels to explore. The single back sheep cut off from the group of white sheep; the use of a camera as a barrier; and the sheer humour and cute-factor of the scene! Well done Trevor and everyone else!

So the final round of the 2008-9 competition was upon us, and it was indeed the Decisive Moment! Al Borrelli's strong finish in this round - 1st and 5th (10 pts + 2 pts) enabled him to overtake Jonathan Abshire at the finishing post. His winning photo, "Choice", is a rather dark and superbly executed portrayal of a man gripped at the "decisive moment" between life and death. Angelica Arbulu made her POTY top-5 debut at 2nd place (8 pts) with "Artist's Soul", a very cool image indeed. The contrast between the bare, dark room and the light outside, together with the beautifully lit smoke and the subject's pose and expression all add up to tell us that this is certainly a decisive moment, even if we don't know what's on his mind. Carolina Sanchez-Monge reinforced her credentials as a POTY top-five regular in 3rd place (6 pts), with "Breaking the Savings Box". Carolina shows us again how she excels with these delightful captures of fun moments in childhood. Meliha Eras earned 4th place (4 pts) with her "Seagull" - a fun and very skillful capture of the precise moment that the bird is about to grab some food. The expression of concentration in its eye is actually quite unnerving! Al Borrelli completed his successful POTY campaign with 5th place (2 pts) for "Egg". We can only wonder why an egg is flying through the air towards the subject, but we're left in no doubt that this is the decisive moment just before she gets egg on her face! The image's relative visual simplicity and it's striking colors are key to its appeal. So in the end Al took 1st place in the 2008/9 POTY, Jonathan was runner-up, and Mick was 3rd. Well done guys! Congratulations to all who took part, in this round and the whole competition over the year. We really did see a huge number of great photos this year.