First up, kudos to the indefatigable John Sarkissian at CWAS for keeping the Malins on the AP calendar. With recent events is was hard to know whether the contest would continue at all in 2021. David, who turns 80 today, was also wanting a much reduced judging work-load.
The CWAS organized many zoom meetings to keep, what has become something of an institution for Australian Astrophotography, alive and well. It’s quite the honor to be a member of first judging panel but I believe it also requires yours truly to remove my presence from the IIS forum (I am sure some cheers will go up with that announcement !
)
A hallmark of previous years was “blind judging” which de-identified submissions to remove any possibility of bias or favour.
I think it important to keep that integrity to the system which clearly can’t exist if I chime-in with kudos,
blunt critique or suggestions on how to improve an image…which then might find its way to the CWAS entry pool.
And with that, I’ll take my leave from IIS.