ImageZ Club Night – Photo Printing & Mounting/Derek’s Tales of the Unexpected
8/2/22 Attendees 30
Kathy began the meeting by reminding us of some date deadlines:
- The Chiltern hundreds 13/2/22
- Mobile Phone Competition 20/3/22
- Exhibition Prints 8/3/22
AGM which will be in the hall on 22nd February when we will be able to vote on our themes for next year. This will be held in the hall.
Please bring your prints along if they are ready for the Exhibition and you are not entering them in the Winner on the Night competition. If you are Deadline 8/3/22
Chenxi continued the evening by explaining about Printing and Mounting images.
He explained to us about DPI, and a decent size for the physical size of an images.
He went on to explain
Resolution needs to be at least 3,508 x2,480 for an A4 and 4,960 x3,508 for an A3 size photograph.
He went on to talk about Aspect ratio.
He said to keep the quality of our images by not shrinking pixels down.
He went on to suggest the best local places to get printing done and gave advice on paper quality.
Chenxi then explained about where and how to get mounts and with the aid of a good video he showed us how he cuts mounts.
We can ask Chenxi to print and mount our images for a particularly fair price of £7.00. He explained he does not charge for his time just materials. Brian will also cut mounts for us, and David has some mounts we can purchase from him if needed.
Chenxi asked that we give him images to be printed and mounted at least a week before required.
This talk was recorded and can be found under Members Area.
We had a short break and Derek continued with his illustrated tales of the unexpected.
Derek spent his four-day break at Littlecote House in Hungerford.
It’s owned by the Warners holiday company and many people take short breaks there because it is beautiful and has lovely grounds.
Littlecote house, Derek discovered was the third most haunted house in England. He booked the Popham room a very luxurious room in the Warner’s brochure.
Reading up on this Derek found out that one of the people who originally lived in the house had signed the death warrant of Charles 1st and on their deathbed was taken away by four headless horsemen. Derek began to wonder if it was such a good idea.
John Popham who had owned the house had been the Lord Chief Justice to Elizabeth 1 and was responsible for many people’s executions including Guy Fawkes. Henry V111 had courted Jane Seymour there too.
Derek and his wife Lin began to explore the house, which had many beautiful rooms including the Chinese room and the Dutch Parlour which had a secret panel which could have hidden people in Cromwell’s time.
Derek was fascinated by the house and returned in October. The house now had a commentary and explained that a Roman mosaic had been found at this house along with some roman artefacts.
Derek discovered a very creepy story of the death of a baby while it was in the care of its nanny. The nanny sent for the parents because the baby became ill, and she thought she heard a coach and horses draw up, but nobody was there. The baby died before the parents returned. The mother of the baby returned and with great sadness made a statue of her baby which remains in the chapel built by Oliver Cromwell along with some of the babies’ clothes.
As Derek was leaving the chapel, he got into conversation with a lady cleaning the Fireplace who told him another gruesome story of the death of a baby at the hands of its father Will Darell a member of parliament for Downton in 1572. Mrs Barnes the midwife was witness to this but was threatened and told to tell no-one of the events that night. She kept the secret until just before her death when she told the Lord Chief Justice. The house passed to John Popham the Lord Chief of Justice and Derek wondered if that was a deal between Will Darell and John Popham to keep quiet about the dealings that had happened there. Derek told us other strange stories of people appearing and disappearing but finished with a story involving himself. He was late going for his evening meal by five minutes and when he opened the door of his room down the hall where he would have walked a part of the ceiling had fallen in just five minutes before when he would have walked there. Perhaps Derek had a lucky escape
Derek’s second story was his three-day pursuit of some deer he wished to photograph. Derek spied some deer but each time he located them and tried to get a shot either they ran off quickly or they surprised him and his camera setting were not right .Derek tried many of their locations but every time was unlucky .Eventually ten minutes before he was due to leave the Deer turned up and as they were not expecting him froze when they saw him. Derek was able to get some lovely shots as you can see here.
Derek spoke to the manager of the Warners sight who asked him to send his images to him. Derek later had an email from the PR lady from Warners asking him to send the images and a short story on where he found them.
He also sent some prints to the manager which he understands are now on show in Littlecote House.
“The moral of the story for all photographers is “if at first you don’t succeed try, try again.”
The evening was light, and entertaining thank you to Chenxi and Derek for their hard work.
Next week ImageZ Club Challenge Trophy #3