Still life

When my father passed away, my mother wanted to give something to the church to commemorate his life. He had always run the annual flower show, so a donation of a silver trophy for best gladioli or best carrot was an obvious choice.

All categories had been taken, trophies already covered.

Except the photography section.

So the winner of the photographic section  is now awarded The David Mitchell Cup.

For various reasons ( maybe the fact Dad is not running the show with his draughtsman's precision ) the numbers of entries for all categories have plummeted. Last year's show was woeful - a couple of spuds and a knitted scarf.  They relaxed the regulations so families and friends could enter. Mum asked me to put in some photographs. Alan put in some too, so did Mathilda the dog.

The categories were;

My favourite place.

A Scottish building.

Weather ( in Scotland???)

Flora and Fauna.

I am not a photographer. I take pictures of things I like.

I have a glass cabinet where the cameras of the family are displayed. My gran's box brownie, my sister's Diana flash, my first point and click and my Dad’s camera that was brought back from the days of his national service in Hong Kong.  You need to do a lot of stuff with light meters and hand held flashes to get it to do anything but it is a lovely piece of engineering.

Now I have a Canon body and two basic lens. A patient of mine,  in her 90’s, decided she no longer needed  the majority of her lenses, and filters, bags and things I don’t know the name of,  so she gave them all to me as it's l compatible with my Canon and I now set off with a different lens and try to work out what is going on.

She was a member of Paisley Photographic Society but got disillusioned by pictures being photoshopped  and digitally altered. I think there is now a breakaway faction, of ‘real’ photography.

It was this society who judged the competition. And I had noticed that there was a lot of other entries, their  alterations obvious.

However, on the day, by the time my mother got back to the table where the photographs were post judging, the cards had been moved. So we had no idea what picture had won what. ( Would never have happened in my dad’s day!)   

I had won overall, but did I win a 'best photo'  in any category?

No idea. I did find out that I didn’t win best photo overall.

But I did win my dad's cup.

Here are the pics put in by Ramsay Incorporated.

A South African crime writer told me this was a Black Hooded Night Heron.

Taken in a nature reserve in Florida.

 Some flowers from the botanical gardens in St Petersburg.

Nice crew members on a barge in Stratford upon Avon.

A prince and a pigeon.

The river Avon.

Kilchurn Castle, I know NOW that this is a very famous castle to capture on camera.

A boat cruising past us on the beach at Indian Rocks, Florida.

And, the only one I have had made into wall art. Loch Lomond.

The Florida sky while a hurricane was a blowing a hoolie a few miles to the north.

Caro Ramsay