|
Club News - 2009/10 |
|
22nd February
Tonight was the club's
version of the Brit's but thankfully without any Liam Gallagher style
shenanigans. As well as lots of silverware and certificates being
handed out an audience vote was taken for the best print and the best
digital image of the year. Les Forrester won the best print with Shum
Reap Sue and surprise, surprise, he also one the best digital image with
Simply Spurn. The rest of us are going to have to step up our game to
make sure he doesn't win everything next year. Congratulation to all
the winners, especially Les. |
|
15th February
The AGM went without too
many problems, with a fairly decent attendance (thank you to all those who
came). Things worth noting are as follows. Member numbers are up
but money is down slightly due to the recent projector purchase. The
club rules were changed to allow the committee to tweak the competition
rules. Two of the Clubman competitions will now be themed instead of
just open. The new syllabus is almost ready and will involve more
getting out with the camera. The committee is largely unchanged but
David Kershaw will take up the Vice President role and David Hall & Chris
New have joined as Elected Members to see what goes on at the meetings.
Finally, my thanks go to all the members of the committee that keep the club
running, growing and evolving. |
|
8th February
Phew - another long night!
This was the Annual Digital competition and there were LOTS of entries for
the judge, Gordon, to get through. The applied section was first with
some great images, unfortunately some of them were pictorial and therefore
lost a lot of marks. In the end, this section was won by me with one
of my fish shots. That judge can come again! Unusually, there
seemed to be less images in the open section that came next though this
could have been a product of the late hour :o) Again there were lots
of great stuff but the eventual winner was David Carr with a portrait of
Bobby, presumably from one of our model nights. |
|
1st February
This was a good evening to
pick to break in the new projector. The YPU portfolio definitely
benefited from not having the horrible yellow cast that the old one imparted
so we saw some great digital images at their best. However, the
several seconds of lag in the audio commentary means we didn't hear them at
their best, though I don't see how we can blame the projector for that.
For the printed images, these had been scanned or photographed by the YPU so
were still actually projected. Nick went through these, pausing some,
skipping over others, and getting the audience thoughts and opinions as he
went. As usual there were some images that were loved and some that we
felt were not up to standard but all were enjoyed. I certainly think
quite a few people went away with a few ideas for locations and future
images. Thanks for organising it, Nick. |
|
25th January
On this evening, Deborah
Brady returned with her new talk, 'Life After Fleet Street'. It has
been 15 years since she escaped the mayhem of journalism and sold all her
camera equipment but she explained how the lure of photography pulled her
back in after a while. Rather than just showing a load of images she
prompted the audience with questions such as what lens they thought was used
or what was the important aspects of the image. She was a very keen
advocate of photographers rights and shared her thoughts on how best to
handle the police and child photography. She even gave us a template
for a release form which I will make available here for those that want to
use it. This was obviously a good night judging by the number of
members still there when she eventually finished at about twenty past ten
:o) |
|
18th January
There were lots of prints,
old and new, in the Annual Print competition. It was looking like a
clean sweep for Les in the open section but John Bickerdyke pipped him to
the post. An exciting tie for third place in the applied let Les in at
the top, narrowly beating Colin Jackson's excellent Damsel Fly.
Perhaps if Colin's image had been judged the right way up it would have been
a different story ;o) |
|
11th January
Eighteen members managed
to brave the weather on what turned out to be the first meeting of the year.
John Bickerdyke brought in the slides from the Film Camera Relay so we
dusted off the old projector and had a look. The results were varied
with exposure generally being OK but some were definitely too dark.
Probably the second most popular 'fault' was a slight milky tinge that we
put down to flare. But by far the most popular 'effect' seems to have
been multiple exposures though whether any were actually done on purpose is
debatable :o) Despite dropping all the slides on the floor, John
is going to show them again when more members are present so that a decent
vote can be taken. |
|
30th November
After a couple of
interesting presentations on stress lines in plastic (much better than it
sounds) and the dual war zones of Serbia and Leeds, the night was taken over
by the Treasure Hunt again. David Hall, Trevor and myself showed some
of the images we took for the competition but were unable to use. Phil
Watson tried to finish the night off with his extended version of his
winning A/V presentation, London Panoramas, but once again the computer said
no :o( Sorry Phil. |
|
23rd November
The
5th Clubman went well this evening with the usual big hitters being pushed
down the league table. Les had to make do with 2nd place in digital
and only 3rd in print - has his crown slipped? It was good to see Bill
Mahoney and John Boyd getting a first place each. These two have been
coming up on the outside for a while now. Also good to see fairly new
member David Kegel get 2nd place in the prints with his fancy platinum
paper. I suspect quite a few people will be checking their monochrome
work to see if any will suit this intriguing medium :o) Well done to
all. |
|
9th November
I thought this 'My Way'
evening went rather well. My pitiful effort was easily outclassed by
the other three speakers, John Bickerdike, Trevor Bottomley and Mike Peers.
John showed us some of the results from the recent conversion of one of his
cameras to infra red. Trevor explained the procedure around his
current favourite technique of getting the subject to leap out of a frame.
However, I think Mike was the star with his ridiculously simple technique
for turning photographs of real objects into simulated photos of models.
His technique worked particularly well on the trains and the airport.
I will see if I can get him to submit some examples for a gallery page. |
|
2nd November
Another unusual subject
and another great talk as Gain Lee regaled us with tales from not one, but
two hobbies. Despite the pressures of being a professional
photographer he seems to find time to both star gaze and storm chase.
He started off with some great 'weather' images and some tales to match,
covering hurricanes, tornados and lightning storms to name just a few.
After the break he launched into what he thought would be too technical a
topic for us mere photographers, astronomy, but the audience ate it up.
I think we were all amazed at the quality of the shots he had taken with a
simple DSLR and a few basic lenses (200mm, 400mm and 2x converter).
OK, you need £500 worth of tracking hardware between your camera and your
tripod but I got the impression it was within the reach of several
interested members. Thank you Gain and thank you Nick for booking him. |
|
26th October
This Monday gave us
'Location, location, location - part 2' by Nick Holowka. He started
off with an in-depth look at the North/East, presented as though you were
based in Newcastle. This 'hub' gave access to a plethora of places
from Whitley Bay to Bamborough Castle. We were then taken on a virtual
tour down the Yorkshire coast as far as Spurn Point. For those that
fancied something a bit closer to home, Nick gave a eye opening look at just
how much good stuff is available in humble Leeds. A quick round off
with subject based thoughts (falconry centres, air shows, 'war weekends'
etc) should give us all something to have a go at. Another good one,
Nick. |
|
19th October
There were quite a lot of
entries for the A/V Presentation competition. Some were from
long-standing members but a good number were from new members which is great
to see. Subject matter was pleasingly varied, ranging from fashion
models to aeroplanes. It turned into the battle of the Big Smoke as it
looked like there would be a tie for first place between two London based
entries. In the end Phil Watson's London Panoramas managed to edge out
Les Forresters London Fashion Week. Well done to Phil and thank you to
John Bickerdyke for judging. |
|
12th October
John Gardner, our resident
professional, was his usual entertaining self this evening. He was
there to present a retrospective of his work over the last twelve months and
it consisted of the usual weddings, wildlife and women! Despite his
late start due to the Schools Competition presentations he managed to rattle
through thousands of fantastic images. Some were A/V presentations but
for most of them he talked about the lighting, the model, the steam engine,
the owl etc. Whatever your interest, from tilt and shift lenses to tattoos,
he had the images and the stories. |
|
5th October
The Treasure Hunt is over!
Today saw the results of many weeks of hard work by Nick, Debbie and the
five teams. The competitive element seemed to bring out the creative
talents of the participants and some seemingly dull subjects were given the
magic treatment. I thought my team, Team Adams, had it in the bag but
the standard from everyone was so high that I was very surprised at the end
to hear we had won, though it was only by a very narrow margin. Many
thanks to Nick & Debbie and to all those who took part. |
|
28th September
This night went well. As
usual John was a little nervous about what he was going to say and as usual
his clear and informative style gave us all more ideas of how to process
portraits to much better effect, Some of the examples that John processed on
the night brought about some quite startling transformations. They say the
camera never lies. I now think that's true. It's Photoshop does all the
fibbing!! |
|
21st September
At last, the return of our
'old pro', John Gardner. He ran his usual Lights Night with his usual
attractive model, this time bringing frequent visitor Leanne. I was
slightly disappointed that the massive lighting setup hovering above the
club was not John's doing but part of the film set for a new TV drama being
filmed at Kirkgate railway station. Despite that, it seemed to attract
the crowds because it was a very busy night with people queuing to get that
killer shot of Leanne. All in all, a good introduction to studio
lighting for all the new members. |
|
14th September
It was results night for
the 4th Clubman and judge Keaton Roebuck was his usual straight talking and
amusing self. He gave some really good critique of all the images and
even gave details as to why some images had lost marks. It was another
good turn-out, both in terms of images and audience, and my first attempts
at printing were up against stiff competition. Les Forester was only
just prevented from getting the double by new member Philip Watson so
congratulations to them both. For the record, I think Keaton is fairly
ambivalent about fish but seemed to quite like my effort :o) |
|
7th September
This meeting produced
another excellent talk by a guest speaker. Tim Vernon has won the
title of "BIPP National Photographer of the Year" three times and has been
the winner of the Scientific Category of the BIPP's Annual Print Competition
six times. He started the session by amazing us all (and baffling most
of us) with his description of his pre-computer montage techniques. It
was all about using lith but the image were nothing like any lith work I
have seen before. Photoshop must have been a god-send for him and the
images he is now producing are superb. As if standard image
compositing isn't hard enough, Tim explained the technique of combining
photography with 3D modelling to produce things like sperm fertilizing an
egg. I have struggled to find any of his work online but anyone who
attended will recognise
this image. I would love to have a go
at some of this stuff and I expect to see this type of work cropping up in
future competitions/exhibitions. Thanks, Tim. |
|
31st August
No meeting due to bank
holiday. |
|
24th August
Well, that is the Summer Workshops finished for this year.
This was the fourth and final workshop and the whole shebang was
wrapped up nicely by John and Nick. John gave us some tips on taking
'people', 'travel' and 'macro' pictures while Nick covered 'landscape',
'wildlife' and 'buildings'. Trevor rounded of the evening with one of
his excellent A/V presentations to demonstrate an alternate way of showing
your images. My thanks to all who took part in this years workshops. |
|
17th August
In this,
the third of the Summer Workshops, Brian Holding tackled the daunting
subject of Photoshop. Topics that were covered included RAW
conversion, exposure correction with levels, dodging and burning, layers and
a whole lot more. He even rounded of the evening with the subject that
scares photographers even more than Photoshop, printing. I must try to
remember that trick he showed us with levels - thanks Brian. |
|
10th August
It was
the second of the Summer Workshops this week and Nick Holowka did us
proud. Take a big chunk of experience, sprinkle in a lot of good
images and a few bad jokes and you have Nick's usual presentation recipe.
There was something there for every ability as he covered composition in a
huge amount of detail. I left the club feeling that the twenty
composition tips that Nick gave were the twenty reasons I don't get anywhere
in competitions. Time for me to start and think a bit more before
pressing the shutter.
Nick has given me a cut down copy, in PDF format, of this excellent
talk. It is quite large (nearly 22 MB)
and should take about two minutes to download on a 2 Mb/s connection. |
|
3rd August
The first
of the Summer Workshops kicked of this week with John Bickerdike covering
the basics. A very well attended meeting heard about the more
frequently used controls and menus and also some of the science behind
sensors and lenses.
Also on the night, David Lockton 'volunteered' to start the ball rolling
with the Film Camera Relay and he took away John's Canon A1 loaded with a
slide film. Good luck to all those taking part in this. |
|
27th July
The
Summer Social seemed to go down well, especially with Nick who made us all
work a large part of the night :o( He was keen to get the members
opinions on the current syllabus and thoughts and suggestions for the next
one. After a brief break for food, and another trip to the bar, he
then handed out the team assignments and metaphorically blew the start
whistle for the Treasure Hunt (My team, Team Adams, have this one in
the bag :o). It was then John's turn to dish out more homework in the
shape of his Camera Relay. I managed to swerve this one but twelve
others seemed keen to have a go. They will get just one week to take
three images with one of his old film cameras before passing it on to the
next person. A good night I feel with lots of work put into producing
some great future meetings. My thanks to all who attended. |
|
20th July
After a
lot of last minute hard work by Paul the birdman the show went ahead on
Monday the 20th of July. Paul's birds were still under the weather but
he managed to track down a beautiful Barn Owl and handler from the Royal
Armouries of all places. She was still in moult herself so unable to
fly but she was wide awake and did some excellent perching and a bit of wing
flapping. I managed to see several great images on the backs of other
peoples cameras. |
|
13th July
The 3rd Clubman went well with new members virtually taking the field.
Judge Ernie Jackson took the unenviable option of judging the images on the
night and coped well with the large numbers and high standard. The
runaway winner of the competition was Nick Walton who managed to get three
places out of four entries (a first and two thirds). Also fresh to the
club was Steve Wright who managed to win the digital section with his first
go. Second place in digital went to Mike Crowther who has placed a few
times recently despite his protestations of not knowing what he is doing - a
rival for Trevor as most improved this year? It was down to Les
Forrester to chalk one up for the old guard with his second place print. |
|
12th July
A number
of intrepid members braved the predictable Annual Outing weather on Sunday
(12th July) and, surprisingly, hardly got damp at all. The odd shower
in the morning gave way to alternate clouds and sunshine and some pretty
good photography weather. We started in Newcastle at the Sage building
and its environs, including the Tyne bridge and the Millenium 'Winking Eye'
Bridge, then moved on to Saint Mary's lighthouse just north of Whitley Bay.
A few die-hards then made their way up to Alnwick but I wasn't among them so
I do not know how they got on. I do know that everyone in our car
(thanks for driving, Nick) had a great time and I expect to see some
excellent images from this trip. |
|
6th July
I have been saved the embarrassment of having to write a
review of my own talk by Nick Holowka -
"Steve Wood gave us all an
insight into the ‘joy’ of underwater photography. The ‘joy’ was deliberately
placed in apostrophes to indicate that sometimes it is anything but! The
challenges that face the photographer even before getting into the water are
many and once you’re in, they increase.
Clearly although beautiful, this is an alien environment and there are all
sorts of issues to contend with. You might get lost because you’ve stopped
to take a photo whilst the rest of the dive party has moved on or literally
miss the boat if you’ve drifted underwater. Great concentration needs to be
applied to air reserves and to regulating nitrogen in the bloodstream and of
course there’s always a risk that to a big fish, you might be considered a
light snack.
However, the issue I found most illuminating is the subject of light.
Photography is literally painting with light. On land this can be difficult
enough but imagine the issues under water. How do you generated sufficient
light to capture an unwilling subject before it darts away but also how do
you cope with light breaking up the deeper one goes?
So I understand much
better why Steve had chosen to title his talk to us in the way he did but I
have to say this was an entertaining and informative introduction to the
challenges and ultimate reward of underwater photography and for the
audience at the very least, there was the very real joy of some delightful
and impactful images."
Thanks Nick. Going by the nice thing people have been saying about
my photographs I seem to be bringing at least some members around to the
beauty of the underwater world. I wish I had put a better fish image
into the 3rd Clubman now so as not to disappoint my new converts :o( |
|
29nd June
With the Hawks doing a no-show we decided to go to Heath
anyway and see what we could find. The weather was great and the sky
was full of interesting cloud but unfortunately one of those clouds was
positioned right where the sun should have been :o( With the light as
absent as the hawks we adjourned to the Kings Arms and talked about cameras
instead. |
|
22nd June
Another chance to catch up with what people have been up
to lately with a Members Night. Trevor showed us his latest holiday
based A/V presentation which went down well as always. Several other
members had images to show and feedback was given where requested. As
predicted here (see below) there were some water droplet shots so well done
to Nick for having a go. I just wish I had been doing something lately
other than repairing fence panels :o( |
|
15th June
A very nice change from the usual fare on this Light
Night. John showed us how to do three little flash projects that I am
sure more than one member will attempt. The big hit was the water
droplets but the edge lit glass and the smoke trails will also prompt some
small scale construction in the next few weeks. I think the success of
the night was evident in the number of people crowded round John's camera at
the water droplet setup, surprisingly much more popular than an attractive
model - go figure :o)
Congratulations to Trevor Bottomley for winning the un-mounted A4
competition. |
|
8th June
A bit of a low turnout this week which was a shame because
the usual Matching Competition hilarity ensued. Ossett were fair game
(depite being called Batley a few times) and the judge was nicely random
with her points and her praise. At one point Nick Holowka had his
entire raison d'etre brought in to question when the judge took a point away
for bad puns. Ossett had some great images and got an uncomfortable
number of 'best image' points - good job they couldn't match for toffee :o)
In the end, by the usual strange twist of fate that seems to be attracted to
this competition, the result was a draw with 31 points each. |
|
1st June
A brush with celebrity for all who attended this night!.
Gavin Hoey, of Digital Photo fame, started his talk with a bit of background
information about himself then quickly moved on to his main subject,
Photoshop. The title of the lecture was 'Photoshop, beyond the basics'
and Gavin managed to cover this without once getting technical. He
covered things like tricks with the Brush tool, cutting out using the
Extract tool and setting up Actions. He even managed to go through RAW
conversion and make it new and interesting. With lots of information
and lots of humour, I think this was a great night. |
|
27th April
With the Yorkshire Monochrome Society not being able to
make it we had 'YPU Portfolio - Part 2' instead. This time we went
through the second disk at a slower pace, giving everyone a chance to
critique each image. The images seemed much more of a mixed bag than
last weeks so perhaps my theory has merit (see 20th April). I thought
it a pretty good night with the comics in the audience putting on a good
show.
For anyone else who is keeping count there was one underwater photograph in
this batch and it wouldn't have made it past the trash bin if it was mine! |
|
20th April
I felt this years YPU portfolio was better than last
years! Perhaps it was the slower pace we went at last year that gave
more time to be critical but this year I didn't see too much that I didn't
like. There were even two underwater photographs this year though I
thought them only average (but what do I know). |
|
13th April
No meeting this week due to Easter. |
|
6th April
Another of John Gardner's Light Nights, this time with one
of his regular models, Bobbi. The un-mounted A4 was won by Maurice
Biglin. |
|
30th
March
Jonathan Jacob from the Police Imaging Unit came and gave
one of the most interesting talks in some time. His photography was
more 'hard work' than 'art' but I didn't know such variety could exist in one
job. From football matches to crime scenes, from 360 degree virtual
panoramas to macro, from helicopters to cameras on poles, Jonathan does it
all and never knows what the day will throw at him. An ideal career
for any young photographer. |
|
23rd
March
This was a 'How To' evening all about converting to black
and white, a process that is easy to do but hard to master.
I expect to see a lot more mono images in the future. |
|
20th
March (Friday)
The first round of the 2nd Sheffield
Digital Image Knockout Competition took place and we did quite well
for our first attempt. The actual winners were Stocksbridge with 21 points but we came a healthy
joint 4th (with Sheffield) with 13 points - not bad out of 22 clubs.
John Gardner came 4th in the individual awards with 'Steam Enthusiast'.
I would like to see the three images that were judged to be better than
John's! |
|
16th
March
Stuart Clarke came over from Castleford
Club to judge the first Clubman competition of the year. Nick Holowka
and Les Forrester did particularly well but special congratulations go to
Debi Knight for what I think is her first Clubman placing. To see the
winning images, click on the 'Competitions' tab from any of the main pages
or just go here. |
|
7th March
Despite the very high standards set by the
Wigan 10 members last week, several WCC members were still willing to get up
and show their images this week. There was a lot of good stuff on show
and I think it rebuilt the confidence in the skills of the club. |
|
2nd March
Phil & Gwen Charnock, founder members of the
highly rated Wigan 10, gave a very interesting talk about their work in
photography. They shows mostly their own work but did include some
images from other members of their club that had been entered in recent
competitions. Several WCC members were heard to be offering their
cameras for sale afterwards.
Thank you to David and Vera for putting Phil and Gwen up in their house that
night. |
|
|
Club news from 2008/09 |
