Hi Folks,
The club held its first club meeting of the new season at the Weston Turville hall last night.
Kathy Chantler our new chairman opened the meeting to say it was nice to see some new club members amongst some of our regular faces. Kathy was not sure about her title but was not bother about being called chair lady or person but probably more about all the complaints going to her lol.
The club is trying to promote itself and three businesses now have photographs taken by our members in their foyers. The club has also printed some new cards to hand out to friends or people that may be interested in joining a photography club. Also the club are on Facebook and Twitter promoting and showing what we are doing at the club.
On the committee this year helping Kathy are
Lawrence Doyle Secretary
Chris Andrews Programme Secretary
Steve Beckett Vice Programme Secretary
Dave Cullinmore Webmaster and internal competitions
Nick Bennett Competition & Projector secretary
Chenxi Ni Website and external competitions
Carol Haines & Melissa Cole Social events Secretaries
Brian Worley Treasurer
Kathy went on to say, this year badges will be handed out on club evenings to each club member with their names printed on them, so I guess to help some of us older ones to remember who we are and also allowing new members to to get to know people’s names more easily. These badges will be collected at the end of the evening and handed out again the next time.
Also the club is going Eco friendly and using proper tea mugs rather than paper cups.
This year’s club programme will include three beginner courses and for any new member’s joining please ask any club member for advice during these club evenings.
We will be having practical nights, the first one I understand is on photographing water, members will be advised as to what to bring along on that evening but I don’t think it will involve a swimming costume.
There will be more of the informal critique nights to show your images and seek advice from our most experienced judges and club members.
Guest speakers are booked, one is on 3d photography, printing images, lighting photography and another on crime forensics.
On the competitions, there will be the same number of five rounds in the league challenge trophy where images are scored by an outside judge.
Also three ‘winner on the night’ competitions this year, images and prints will only be critiqued by the judge and will not be given a score mark. However, the judge will award a winner on the night of his choice. No images entered in an internal club competition can be entered twice.
The external Chiltern Image competition has been moved back to April/May this season and you can enter any of your competition images as prints in that event.
Also Brian said, on the new membership form which is required to be filled in again by all members it includes a box saying ‘I agree that images entered in the competitions may be used by the club in external competitions’. This is only so the club can use them in the external Rosebowl type competitions and not anything else. Fees for the new season remain at £40 plus £2 a week for coffee and hire of the hall. Or a reduced rate of £90 for a one off payment for the whole of the season.
Dave then gave a talk on entering images in the competitions.
It has been agreed to relax the rules on the size of the mounts, prints can now be on any size mounts.
People entering prints still have to enter them as an image on the website before the deadline of midnight on the Sunday before each competition.
The image size entered on the website can be no bigger than 1200 pixels high and 1600 pixels wide to fit the projector.
In the league challenge trophy we can still enter three images either 2 in a theme and 1 in open or vice versa.
On the ‘winner on the night’ competition one can have 3 in print or 3 as images or a combinations of 2 and 1.
So here are this seasons competitions below
(where the theme of love only has a print round in the open section of it, so we will need to get a print done to enter the open in that round)
Sometimes judges will require a key line (border) around an image especially if the edging is black.
This helps the judge to see where the picture ends against the black background of the projector as seen here
Dave gave a demonstration of how to size and enter a competition on the club’s website. He said the site will resize it automatically for you if you ask it too but it is best to do it yourself beforehand as the image may get altered to fit in a different way to which you expected it.
Coffee time in new mugs lol
In the second half of the evening several members had taken images during the summer and did a little talk on them.
The first up was Brian
Brian showed us this image where the day was so hot and bright he had to use the shelter of the car park to reduce the brightness
another model originally photographed on a dull day was photographed on a better day and the photograph was given a tone to make the blue sky and a warmer feel to the picture
Next was Carol who went to Canada and had learnt a bit about putting some foreground in a landscape (unlike me who tilted the horizon for her lol)
The next image was the Niagara falls on the Canadian side. Carol wanted to get the boat in the image for interest
Carol was interested in this old building which has a chalk floor
Next was Jan
Jan has a season ticket to visit Water Perry Park, a nursery garden in Oxford. Jan liked this flower which she had not seen in this colour before
Jan had recently changed her camera for a smaller sized one and these were her first two images taken with her new camera which she is really pleased with
Next was me
I wanted to get an iconic picture of the sunset between the Apollo Portal (Apollo God of the sun) in Naxos, Greece which was built in 500 BC. This Portal is the only remains of a temple said to be hundred feet high when finished but did not get completed due to wars with Samos. The Greeks after the war took the stones to repair their own buildings.
I took around a hundred pictures alongside over two hundred people all trying to do the same thing with selfies.
Once the sun had dropped it was like leaving Wembley stadium on cup final day.
However, software is so helpful in raising the lighting without the sun being affected and the cloning out of people in the way lol.
Now that was what I wanted
Next was John
John also went to Greece but this time to Crete and did a monochome version of this scene
John is very aware of shapes and captured this image of this villa’s windows
John also visited Birmingham where the station has been covered in metal sheets which give off patterns.
John said he needed to work on the lines but others thought it worked well with them included
Next was Kathy
Kathy has a friend who plays an instrument. She has formed a group of musical friends for a photo shoot
Also at another shoot in London Kathy liked the the interesting appearance of this lady and asked her if she could take a picture.
Most people will say yes if you ask nicely said Kathy
I understand these shoot opportunities run in Birmingham and London where you can go along on certain organised trips in a group.
Next was Lawrence
who went to an aircraft display and took this shot
Also he went to this memorial I believe is in Staffordshire
Next was Nick who specialises in getting shots in the music industry
The featured photo on the heading was also taken by Nick who was hoping for a sunset but ended up taking the model in clouds
This was a group of people that posed for him called London Pride but not the beer lol
Next was Peter
Peter went to the Aylesbury summer venue and captured this colourful character by the church.
Later the group went down below the subways and some members just waited for anybody to cross the bridge between the gap in the trees
Peter then set his tripod up at the Waterside theatre to capture this ambulance trail of lights using a slow shutter speed.
Finally new member Steve who joined us on the Aylesbury venue took these two shots
A good rare shot without any cars parked
Thank you to all the people that did a quick talk of their summer events
Next week
What to shoot in the next 12 months/Beginners Course Part 1
Tuesday September 18, 2018 from 20:15 to 22:15
An evening where we will be sharing our knowledge of events and locations that are photographically interesting and when to visit them. This will be interactive and the assembled “calendar” will be transcribed up to the club website.
In the backroom, we’ll be running Part 1 of our three session beginners course where you’ll be guided around the basics of your camera and learning how to start to take real control of your photography. This course is suitable for anyone new to photography, those wanting to increase their technical understanding or if you simply want a refresh of stuff you have learnt in the past.