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+--- Thread: Tuesday, 27 October 2026 (/showthread.php?tid=1373)
Tuesday, 27 October 2026 - dewarp - 10-27-2026
My 5th image is titled “Barberton District”. This is an old one!
When I got back into photography in the digital era, I entered my first local salon. I entered six images, of which only one was accepted. I was OK with that, until I attended the salon results presentation. There I was horrified, since I considered that my rejected images were better than many of the accepted images. After that I announced that I would “never again” enter a salon, because salon judges’ views did not appear to coincide with my own.
A few years later I joined an informal group in Johannesburg called The Camera Café. This was a bunch of (mainly older) folks who were into “alternative” photography. Basically, interesting edits, including both digital and darkroom versions. Great days those! I took to it like a duck to water.
Early in 2010 there was a South African salon that had a category specifically for manipulated digital images. The folks at Camera Café suggested that I enter. I said NO! They then continued to bend my ear until I eventually gave up and agreed to give it a go. I entered four images. All four were accepted, one got a COM (Certificate of Merit) and one (Barberton District) won the overall medal.
I have never ever entered another salon.
This year I decided to enter this old image at my current camera club, and see what it scored. The judge gave it 12/15 in the open category. Anyway, I personally would still rate it as being one of my best digital images!
The original image was taken near Barberton, South Africa, but had a small wooden shack in it. I didn’t find the shack too interesting, so I took an image of a house shot in the village of Rhodes, and used that instead. I was much into doing watercolour look-alikes at that time using the Photoshop CS2 Art History Brush tool; so, this was the outcome.