First Monthly Competition winners 2025/26. The Story...

Overall & 1st = Colour Winner Bike Racing by Dennis Penny

 This photograph was taken at Knockhill on Friday 04-07-2025, it was the practice day for the Superbike meeting. The advantage going then is that it is a lot quieter so more freedom to access various spots to get photographs. It was a wet day, other than getting soaked there were two advantages to the weather being very wet, one spray coming off the tyres which adds motion to the image also as the conditions are not bright the riders wear clear visors, so you see their faces.

Camera Olympus OM-1 Lens 100-400mm Focal Length 400mm (800mm 35 mm equiv.)

Shutter Speed 1/1250 f6.3 ISO 1250 Shutter Priority Centre Weighted Average Metering.

DP

Colour section 1st = Midwinter by Derek Ormiston

If the tide is low on a weekend morning and it's not raining heavily, we will often head to Pettycur Bay. Providing the weather is kind, what's not to like about a wide and mostly empty beach with the Forth estuary as a backdrop - our dogs love the space, and I can step back from time to time and try and capture an image or two... This photo was taken mid-morning, early January, in near perfect conditions - ISO 200, f/11, 1/3200 sec.

I used a Lumix G9 micro four thirds camera paired with a 12-200mm Olympus lens (24-400 in full frame) - this is very portable, ideal for long walks with the dogs, and providing the light is okay, the zoom range allows for a wide variety of shots without a lens change. The raw file was processed in Photoshop with minor adjustments only.

DO

Mono section winner by Ken Goodfellow

The image of the Union canal was taken in April 2025 during a short stroll after lunch at the Park Bistro. The image is looking east towards the Park Bistro/Park farm. Originally taken in colour the image was developed in Lightroom where I de-noised the image and

sharpened it before converting to mono. I then used the B&W adjustment to change the colour values of the base image. The image was then developed further with the Basic tone section and the Tone Curve before applying 6 masks to dodge and burn.

Taken on a Canon R5 with 24-240mm zoom lens at ISO 800, 24mm setting on lens, F13 at 1/1600sec.

KG

Nature winner by Linda Cooper

I attended a Photographer’s Day at the British Wildlife Centre near Gatwick in March and thankfully the weather was fairly bright. There is a very large Scottish Wildcat enclosure where most of the cats are quite secretive, but one is more adventurous and was briefly tempted out from the bushes with food.

Canon R7 with 100-500 lens. ISO 1250, f/4.5, 1/5000.

 Minimal processing using Photoshop Camera Raw with a crop and ‘light’ tabs adjustment.

LC