Murcia photo of the month April 2025
Here’s the top image of the month taken by the Los Alcázares Digital Camera Club (LADCC)
In Spain, and in particular Murcia, we are blessed with an outdoor lifestyle and, with this in mind, the LADCC were asked to capture ‘Nature’ in their monthly competition. Guidelines were set as to the photographic brief, as the title on its own was far too general. The intention was to capture the beauty and diversity of nature, without any type of ‘scapes’ (landscapes, seascapes, cloudscapes etc.) as these are all covered by other monthly themes.
The brief of “anything, apart from humans, that breathe and/or grow” certainly made members think about how best to portray their photographic skills. Once again, some absolutely stunning photos were taken of all types of wildlife, whether it simply moved with the wind or moved past you (sometimes just as you were about to take the shot!).
With our growing membership it was proving difficult to adequately separate the many images with our scoring system so, as a result, a new scoring system for the photos was trialled this month. It seemed to work well as members opted to retain it for all future competitions.
Top marks went, once again, to Gary Hull whose photo of a ‘paper wasp’ was so wonderfully clear that members had to ask whether this was one of Gary’s ‘pet’ wasps! He took hundreds of photos to achieve this image. It is a great photographic skill to be able to capture such close-ups of wildlife, especially as the subject may well have a mind of its own!
Gary used a 60mm macro lens allowing him to get up close to the subject. The detail in the photo below is absolutely stunning and full credit to Gary for his photo and, of course, the wasp for keeping still long enough for Gary to capture the moment!
During the course of their monthly review of the groups’ entries, many interesting individual topics of conversation were raised. One such was about editing and cropping photos, particularly as we are now living with editing apps using Artificial Intelligence (AI), like it or not!
Jill Francis took a lovely picture in order to capture a variety of nature, with a tree in blossom, but originally didn’t intend to capture some honey bees pollinating the flowers. The group discussed the photo’s many positive aspects and also some things which some members thought may have improved the photo.
Those who were in favour of cropping suggested that this would highlight the flowers with the additional bees. Jill explained that she wanted a more general nature shot. This point actually shows how subjective photography can be. The photo captured was what the photographer wanted; she didn’t want the bees to be highlighted. Below are the two images in question and with cropping you can see the changes made. In general, a photographer usually sees an image that they want to capture and the message they want to convey.
Jill’s two photos are below and, whilst there is no definitive answer as to which is better, maybe you can decide which you prefer?
This is one example of what the small LADCC group discuss at the club’s monthly meetings. Positive feedback is a great way to learn but, ultimately, it is up to the photographer to portray an image as they wish.
The club usually meets twice a month, with an indoor ‘workshop’, at the Las Claras centre in Los Alcázares, on the first Tuesday of every month and, often, an outing toward the end of the month, where the group gets together to collectively work on the topic for the monthly competition.
The club welcomes new members, either visitors or residents, as with modern day technology everyone can keep in contact for training sessions, sharing knowledge etc or more regularly via ‘group chats’. If you would like more information about the club, or would like to come along to a meeting, please do not hesitate to look at the website www.ladcc.es or email informationladcc@gmail.com