P3D Detroit, December Report

[fj834@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Dr. George A. Themelis)]

Do I need to say that we all had good time?  Plus the food (Christmas
Party) was delicious!  And the items for display and short presentation by
Robert Grant very interesting.

The important details now:  Competition subject was indddeed "sky things"
(thank you Paul!)  If that's any indication of my interest this year, I
started thinking about my entries half an hour before leaving home the same
day of the competition.  In this short time I managed to project a dozen
slides and pull out 3 good ones, one of which I remounted in RBT.

I did well with a first place (fighter airplane from air show) and a second
place (stereo montage of army parachuters falling in the middle of the
ocean, with nice sunset in the background - I felt like cheating with this
one since I used a similar idea last year when the subject was
"Transportation" - only they were falling in front of a plane!)

Dennis Hanser (who just joined photo-3d) did well too.  I remember one of
his slides, also a montage (you are not copying me, are you Dennis? :-))
with a huge setting sun placed out of the window of a building.  He would
have done better if he did not have the creative idea to put gel filters
*inside the slide* in his 3rd entry.  You see, we are using a TDC projector
(polarizers before slide) and gel filters tend to depolarize the light.  As
a result, this slide projected depolarized (curiously enough, it seemed
better polarized when turning the head 45 degrees to the side, an
indication that the gel filters had rotated the direction of polarization)
and got rated very low, even though it looked like a lovely picture.  

Paul Talbot, our new star, also did well with a 3d place and a HM.  I
personally though that his HM picture, a moonlighted cityscape, deserved a
much higher score and award.

Paul Milligan also did well with his picture of the "Barn Owl"  Of course,
he is not a member of the Detroit club.  I snicked in one of his picture
(last one so it did not have any effect) to test the judges... who passed
the test by giving the owl enough points for a 2nd place.

Regarding the standings, Dennis is still ahead with plenty of points... Bob
Chamberlain (an experienced club member) is second and I just got ahead of
Paul in third place.  Having lost my change for first place this year I can
only hope to finish ahead of Paul in our own little contest.  But this will
be very tough to do.  Paul is getting better month after month and this is
only his first year competing and second in stereo.  By next year he should
be good enough to give Dennis a run for his money! :-)  I might concentrate
in Cleveland competitions where things appear to be easier.  Oh, no, darn
it! I forgot about our future Cleveland Superstar, Mark Dottle from
Pittsburgh... But maybe he will start his own club by then... :-)

Reporting for Detroit Michigan from Brecksville near Cleveland Ohio,

George Themelis


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