2016—Woot!

The Placer Camera Club’s annual awards presentation took place Tuesday evening.  There were two kinds of awards presented at the meeting:  awards for best projected images, selected from those images that members submitted for judging during the year; and awards for best prints selected by popular vote from the membership.  We were allowed to submit 8 images in the projected image competition and three prints.  I have focused my photography so narrowly this past year  that most of my images eligible for the competition were wildlife, in the Nature category, and I had to choose which images to submit for final judging.  In the end, I submitted 5 Nature images and 3 Open category images.  The Open category is a catch-all for images that don’t fit any of the other categories.  For the print part of the competition, I submitted 2 Nature prints and one landscape print.

Every year as a way to announce the annual winners, the president of the club puts together a magnificent slide show that features each of the winning images by category, starting with honorable mentions and ending with images of the third, second, and first place awards.  The slide show exhibits the best images from club members and there is a lot of talent in my camera club.  It is always a thrill to see one of your own images projected as one of the honorable mentions or place winners.  This year, I was astounded to win first place in the two projected image categories in which I submitted entries.  And, in the print competition, again I was amazed to win first place in both of the categories in which I submitted prints.  I am honored, humbled, and simply blown away by my awards.  But the biggest thrill of the evening for me was to see that the slide show’s final image was my photograph of “The Fish Thief” and that image is the Placer Camera Club’s 2016 Photograph Of The Year!  Woot!

First Place: The Fish Thief –Nature Category-Projected Images
Photo of the Year

First Place: Storm Brewing –Open Category-Projected Images 

First Place:  Great Egret In Breeding Plumage – Nature  Prints Category

First Place:  Milky Way – Landscape  Prints Category