QUAD Results - 2006

2006 QUAD Club Competition

After months of preparation, the first annual "Quad" interclub digital image competition was held on the evening of May 5th at this years host club, the Greater Lynn Photographic Association. The results were both surprising, and not so surprising.... more about that later. The judge for the event was Ulrike Welch from Marblehead. Present from MVCC were Valerie Cox, Quad chairman, Art Vaughan, equipment operater, Malcolm Anderson, and Clare Coco. There was nearly a full hall, surprising for a Friday night event.

As most folks probably know, the Quad is an interclub digital image competition between four clubs, Gateway, Greater Lynn, Merrimack Valley, and Stony Brook. Each club submitted one image only in each of 24 categories: At the zoo, Bridge, City, Curve, Dome, Eye, Fog, Gotcha, Layers, Long ago, Metal, Mill, Motion, Neon, Pipe, Red, Reflection, Repetitive, Rust, Sloppy, Swirl, Texture, Tool, and Wrinkle. Each category could be singular or plural. Four screens, laptops, and projectors were set up, with screens tagged "A", "B", "C", and "D". Each club's 24 entry group of images was divided up into four sub-groups, each loaded into a different club's computer, to be projected on that club's projector. The projected image was the only one evaluated by the judge... no laptop screen "peeking" was allowed. In most categories there was a clear winner, in others the choice was a bit more difficult. Images were graded from 1 to 4, running from 1st to 4th place. The club with the lowest score was the winner. After the "number crunching" was completed, the results were:

There were 9 award winners from Gateway, 8 from MVCC, 4 from Stony Brook, and 3 from Greater Lynn.

Individual award winners from Merrimack Valley were:

The event ran smoothly, but.... there was clearly a difference in the way the variety of projector / computer set-ups put the images on the screens. Some images looked great on the laptop monitors, but were significantly less appealing on the screens. The only way to eliminate image quality variation produced by a mix of equipment.... is to eliminate the mix of equipment. Shiv Verma of Stony Brook has offered to line up four identical computer / projector setups for future competitions, thus assuring that the cause of any variation in image quality will be the image itself, not "mix and match" equipment.

I want to thank everyone who participated in this event. Special thanks go to the host club, Greater Lynn Photographic Association, for providing the venue, and to Amy Musinsky for arranging the delivery of a LOT of pizza. Please note that mages not selected for this particular event are still good prospects for the "guys vs Gals" competition later in the month.

Art Vaughan

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