First – Aussie Allan

Aussie Allan – Wine Bar Blues

Second – Gary King

Gary King – Portrait

Third – Fiona Ewers

Fiona Ewers – Olivia

The power of the studio workshops, all three images were taken at one of this years studio workshop nights.

There are three competitions held on 15/April 2012 in Amersham

• The Chilterns Hundred Members Exhibition
• The Club Print Championship
• The Club Projected Digital Championship

The Chilterns Hundred Members Exhibition is for every single member of a CACC member club (ie ImageZ), you may enter one image to be projected on the day. The two ‘Club” events are for a selection of 15 images from the club to be entered as a single submission.

How you can enter the Chiltern Hundred Members Exhibition

This is for projected digital images. All images need to be sized for 1400 x 1050 pixel resolution and must be saved as a JPG image. Since the entries need to be sent to the CACC to arrive by 19/March 2012 then you need to send your files to Aussie Allan the competition secretary before 17/March. Each and every member can enter one image in this competition. The images will be judged by a panel of three judges who will award a number of PAGB awards.

Files must be named as follows:

Title and Author can have letters, numbers, spaces and hyphens as needed. There must be an single ‘_’ underscore character between the title and author as shown in the example below:

The “Club” championships

Since this requires a lot more co-ordination for entries, we need some help from the membership to co-ordinate the entries collection and selection. It would be great to have a group of five members to determine which entries make it to the final submission.

More information is available on the CACC website, please click the text label Championships Day on the left hand column on the CACC website.

Less is more, exhibition at the Upstairs Gallery Berkhamstead

Just a quick note that there is a Private Viewing of and exhibition entitled Less is more at the Upstairs Gallery in Berkhamstead on Friay 24/Feb 2012.

All members are welcome to attend, and should bring a print of the invitation that is available to download

Download invitation to Less is More

Know your lenses

Many of us have a standard zoom that goes from around 28mm to around 70mm, it’s a handy range and good for many things. However portraits of people at close range are not it’s best trick at 28mm. People pictures generally have a more flattering look if you step back and zoom to the 70mm setting. With the longer focal length there’s two effects. Folks noses and ears are better aligned rather than look like their nose is two feet in front of their ears – compression of distance effect. Secondly the width of the background behind them is narrower, allowing you to isolate them from the scene – or in the studio use narrower background rolls. But there is of course more…

Photographer Neil van Niekerk’s article demonstrates the other effect of making heads look overly big and legs shorter.

Click to see the article

Please stop by the UK division of the  National Association of Photo Professionals (NAPP) site for more details.

I think that the course will be bookable from the Kelby Training Live site.

It’s a bit early to book your seats for the Rosebowl final in April, but it might be worth getting your calendar freed up in case we do qualify. 2nd place tonight at Whitchurch Hill CC by a small margin of 4-points could well put us in with a chance for a final place. Congratulations to Whitchurch Hill CC for their win and for Buckingham CC and Watford CC for their entries. Tonight’s judge was not afraid to use a wide range of marks with scores over a 10-point range being given.

We don’t yet know what the final result table looks like so can’t post it yet, but will know soon enough as the last of the rounds is on 28th February.

On behalf of the comittee folks i’d like to extend my thanks for the support you have shown in sending in images for consideration for the Rosebowl, and for the freedoms granted to allow us to optimise them for best display when projected, the optimisation has indeed been successful and is something that we want to share with the club in the coming months.

Call for Entries

Your chance to win a prestigious photography award and cash prize of £5,000. With an overall prize fund worth £20,000, winners and commended entrants will have their work showcased in a national touring exhibition and stunning book, published by AA Publishing.

Find out more on the British Wildlife Photography Awards website, including past winning entries and information about the judges.

Samuel Aranda from Spain has picked up the top prize, but I think with the range of categories covered in the awards there is something of interest for all kinds of photographers.

Some of  the topics covered are hard hitting, but the work of these photojournalists is incredible given the situations and stories they tell. Regardless of your views, the storytelling craft of these photographers is something to study. For photojournalists the retouching of pictures is simply not allowed. They aren’t permitted by their conscience and their editors to even crop out the details from their frames, so composition and placement of elements in the frame is a decision that is made at the time the shutter is released.

World Press Photo winners announced

Photojournalist tell stories and it’s not just war and the things that people do to each other, you might want to have a look at the Nature stories category for the work of Brent Stirton entitled Rhino Wars.

Key steps to consistent colour

1. Set-up your monitor correctly
2. Use a hardware device to measure the colour and build a profile for your monitor
3. Make sure your software is set-up correctly
4. Use the profiles that come with your printer / paper / ink or make your own
5. When you print make sure you don’t do “double colour management” in both the application and your printer driver

For most of us the computer monitor we view our photos on is the single most important device, we judge is the photo sharp, is the subject in the right place, is it the right subject, is it too dark or light and is the colour what we want. Then we open our photo editing software and do some magical things to the picture with the monitor as the window and view of the picture. It’s this reason why getting your monitor right is the first and most important step in getting consistent colour from screen to print or projector and on other people’s screens, printers and projectors.

Monitors are not all the same, more expensive ones can display a bigger range of colours and some monitors are optimised for fast response for computer games. Far too many monitors have excessive brightness as standard and many favour contrast boosting as opposed to smooth gradients. One thing is that your monitor is part of the complete computer system that is the combination of operating system, graphics card, connection cables used and the screen itself. Change any of the elements and it’s essential to re-profile before you work on critical photos. Once you have set-up your system and profiled the monitor don’t change the settings. If you or another user on the computer changes the screen brightness then the hardware conditions are changed and your lovingly created profile is not valid anymore. Even changes in the ambient light of the room you work in can make changes in how you see colour, even more so when the computer automatically adjusts the brightness to compensate.

Some suggested devices to create profiles for your displays and sometimes more…

ColorMunki Display

ColorMunki Photo

Spyder 4 Express

Spyder 4 Elite

These might seem expensive, but how much does a print cost you to redo in ink, paper and your time? If you only need to make the print once then the profile device is quickly paid for.

Further reading

• Cambridge in Colour has a great set of resources on many topics, colour management is one of them

Any further tips and experiences you’d like to share with the club? Put them in the comments below please?

Andy Campbell’s page

Click the picture to visit Andy Campbell's page