Today it was off to the annual Sydney Royal Easter Show, a festival of country meets city showcasing agriculture, arts and crafts and to some extent industry. And some of the best meat pies on the planet from Mick's Bakehouse which, unfortunately, only normally operates out of Leeton and Wagga Wagga in the Riverina district some 3 hours from Canberra, let alone Sydney.

And of course it was also my first time out exhibiting in a photo show. Spectacularly unsuccessfully, may I add. I did have a bad feeling about the prints (and the printer) from the start (no advice, limited discussion, pretty much make a couple of tweaks and press [Print]) but it was only seeing my print amongst a bunch of others that I realised how "off" it was. (And how pointless it was to submit a shot at A4 size where it shrinks into the corner of the wall.) As for the winners; the Rural category was won by a shot of backlit mist against gum trees, which was very impressive may I add. The Urban one was won by a shot of a house lamp illuminating an empty car park. (I've seen similar before but it was very effectively done and still creative.) The winner of the Open one... was a bunch of flowers with some kind of texture distortion filter on them. (Buh? Compared to some of the other shots there?) Finally the Portrait winner was a mono of a girl looking straight at the camera which, inexplicably considering some of the competition, also took out best photo of show. It wasn't a bad shot, but there was nothing particularly imaginative or insightful about it. I see as good or better on PBase on a daily basis and I certainly saw a bunch of images surrounding it which gave far more insight into their sitters or were vastly more original in treatment.

(Based on the comments I should probably clarify something here since I may have expressed things badly above; I wasn't actually disappointed or disheartened by the outcome. I went in expecting nothing but experience, and it delivered on that. I AM disappointed by the printouts that were done by a commercial printer who I expected a bit more from, but that doesn't mean that I won't find a good one for future competitions. And yes, there WILL be future ones. Win, lose or draw, I have the taste now.)

But I digress. When we went to the chicken display some of the chooks felt comfortable sticking their heads out through the cages. This one also seemed to like some gentle and tender patting from one of the younger visitors.

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