Regent Street, London

Today I attended a Royal Photographic Society Advisory Day for the ARPS distinction - but only as an observer, so it was very relaxing as I had not submitted a panel to be critiqued. They started off by saying that a RPS qualification is the most difficult in the world, as they have such high standards - in years gone by a strong panel with 2 or 3 less accomplished images would have passed, but today each and every image has to be successful and worthy in itself. They compared their qualifications to others worldwide and said their standard was much higher.

We saw some very interesting panels and the judges, one of whom was Will Cheung, were very fair and gave solid advice. (They were far nicer than the pair I had at my LRPS advisory day who were quite sarcastic and a bit mean!) There seemed to be a general confusion as to which category a panel of images falls under - some candidates thought their panels were Applied (which can be documentary and tell a story) when they actually were Travel. One thing was clear - the judges love anything that is new and different. I guess they see so many images of familiar scenes like Iceland, Tuscany and China that they now expect images from here to be different and not the usual common scene one sees in magazines.

After lunch we saw two amazing panels, which both fitted into the Contemporary category. This is a category that documents an issue. The one candidate presented a panel of images of nude models who had been self harming, and there was an image that showed her as a nude woman with a corresponding image that showed her scarring. It was very powerful and the judges loved it. However the highlight of the day was a panel presented by a young woman which was based on her dreams and memories of childhood - her entire panel was of broken and abandoned toys, mainly dolls. It too was very powerful, very different and I thought, quite creepy. I would have thought they were more nightmares from an unhappy childhood than dreams. The judges loved it and in fact Will Cheung thought it was good enough for a Fellowship, which is the next stage up.

This is a scene of upper Regent Street, looking at All Souls church, taken when I dashed out to get some lunch. The flags are for her majesty's birthday celebrations which are taking place up and down the country this weekend.