2019 Chairman’s Report - Solihull Photographic Society

Welcome to the 41st Solihull Open Exhibition catalogue. This is the third year of the digital-only version which exists solely on DVD and on-line via our website. It joins the 2016, 2017 and 2018 catalogues and these and subsequent catalogues will remain available on this site. There is a useful search function too.

Grateful thanks again to our hosts Solihull School. This is our fifth year at the school and their facilities and assistance have been invaluable in enabling us to hold the exhibition in Solihull town centre.

I note that the total entry decreased slightly this year which is a little disappointing but of more significance is the fact that it was print entries that were down by the greater percentage. There can be many factors involved here but perhaps the costs incurred when entering prints are becoming prohibitive.

For this year we removed our long-standing digital category Creative and replaced it with Scapes. It seems this met with general approval as the number of entries were noticeably higher for this new category than we have seen with the old one. Scapes will thus remain a category for the future; creative images can still be entered into Colour or Mono as appropriate of course.

I am indebted to the team of hard working members from Solihull Photographic Society without whom this exhibition would not happen. The full team are credited elsewhere in this catalogue together with their specific roles/jobs as appropriate.

Our selectors this year were Chris Palmer FRPS EFIAP DPAGB APAGB, Judith Parry DPAGB HonPAGB AFIAP, and Rosemary Wilman HonFRPS BPE5* AFIAP APAGB, and we are very grateful for their time and efforts in choosing the lucky award winners.

One small change I should point out is that we took the decision this year to cease engraving the medals and instead to produce certificates for medal winners as well as for other award winners and which make it clear what image received the award.

Our rules for Nature entries were as strict this year as last and no infringements were found. With the recent changes to the PAGB rules we will review our rules before the 42nd Open.

Jim Hiscox,
Chairman of the Exhibition
February 2019