2015 CFC Awards Gala

We had a full house at the newly renovated Ristorante Wellington Biblioteca – well not really, but it certainly looked and felt that way last night. We were treated to a wonderful array of foods for all tastes and palates. The room was beautifully decorated with Christmas tree, twinkly lights and seasonal place settings on the tables - all adorning our "banquet" hall. Christmas music and member seasonal images added to the party-like atmosphere.

We started the meeting with two slideshows which included images submitted from 25 of our members. The November theme slideshow was all about composition – namely Rule of Thirds & Variants – while our outing for the month was from the lighting of Napanee's downtown business core – buildings literally drenched with seasonal lights – “drenched” being the operative word as were the photographers on that eventful club outing! We even managed to get Charlie Brown & his Gang to help put together the Napanee lights material – have a look if you didn't make it to the meeting – both slideshows have been posted to our Facebook page.

After gluttonously devouring the wonderful entrees and deserts, the second half of the evening was opened by a short review of 2015 put together with the help of our friend - the Pink Panther. After a fervent introduction & reception (much of it canned applause!), David Gilbert and I took to the stage to present some of the most coveted trophies in all of fotoland. After reviewing over 3300 images submitted over the course of the past 12 months, it was boiled down to 4 nominated images for each of 19 separate categories, plus one overall Image of The Year Award. The categories and the winners were:

Award	Winner	Image Title
Portrait	Glen Dobson	10th Birthday
Sports/Action	Anna Lam	Somersaults
Altered Reality	Janice Ruggles-Bolton	Birds of a Feather
Aquatician	Caspar Radden	Wicked Waves
Animal	Marilyn Holland	Orange Feline
Funniest Image	Carol Quinn	Eye Boggling
In The Mood	Bert Jenkins	Cobble Stone Lane
Nightscape	Margaret Liddon	A Lover's View
Most Adventuresome	Dave Tugwood	-
Monochrome	Bob Stock	Grove
Photoshopper of the Year	Glen Dobson	Bon Echo Kayaks
Architecture	Lew Mitz	Sailing
Slideshow of the Year	Bert Jenkins	River Cruise
Use of Colour	Jan Swenson	Inks
Composition	Ramesh Pooran	Comin' In
Floral	Daphne Creasy	Bursted Pod
Shallowest Photographer	Dave Tugwood	Singin' the Blues
Landscape	Alan Jenner	Morning Light
Light Painter	Dave Tugwood	Starry Night in the County
2015 Image of the Year	Mags Kandis	Petting

Congratulations to all our 2015 CFC Award winners. The full Awards Presentation is available for viewing on our Youtube channel.

Our next meeting will be on January 10th and our theme challenge for December will be Member's Choice.  Due to the busy Xmas period, we will not have a formally scheduled outing for December, but will have one early in January, so more on that later. Our January theme challenge (2 months advance notice) is Frigid – so interpret as you will!

Thanks for everyone who came out to the Gala and especially to our helpers who created the wonderful atmosphere for our special night.

Merry Christmas & Happy Holidays

November Meeting in Retrospect

At Sunday's meeting we were treated to a cross country whirlwind trip that displayed Canada's wildlife at it's finest. Kyle Blaney showed us images captured on his 20,000km camping trip this past Spring which started close to home – in Belleville - and ended up in Vancouver via the Northwest Territories. Rare birds and encounters with confused bears and angry otters were but a part of his very enjoyable presentation. Kyle also discussed his role as outreach coordinator for the Shad enrichment program for gifted teens prior to their entry to our universities and encouraged more local representation in this program.

We also reviewed the results of our Sept 24^th LightPainting workshop that was held on the Belleville waterfront and led by Glen Dobson.

Three slideshows completed the evening's events, including a Glimpse of the Island and People of Cuba (by James Archbold & Kathryn MacDonald), our Ameliasburgh outing slideshow and the monthly theme A Splash of Colour show. The images from the later two slideshows have been uploaded to our Facebook page for your viewing pleasure.

The meeting was well attended and we had great member participation in submitting material for the meeting with 32 individuals sharing their work for our collective review. Thanks to all who participated.

 The theme challenge for November is Rule of Thirds & Variants (images due at the end of November). The theme for December will be Member's Choice - to be shown at our January meeting. These Choice images can be from your portfolio of past images on any subject of your choosing.

Our outing for November will be held on lucky Friday November 13^th. It will be a night shoot of the lighting of the festive lights in downtown Napanee. There will be a large street party with musicians and the like – lots to shoot.

Next meeting (Sunday, Dec 6^th) is our annual CFC Awards Night & Gala with gormet pot-luck dining and great comeraderie.

Thanks again and happy shooting!

Ken

October Meeting - Raising the Bar!

October's meeting was very well attended and included image contributions from 27 of our members. At the meeting, the bar was raised on our photographic artistry with incredible views of the Night Skies & Nightscapes by Dave Tugwood and Ramesh Pooran. Their images and presentation elicited great interaction with the assembled group and I will be posting these slides to our Youtube channel shortly. They were followed by Bert Jenkins, who gave us a wonderful display of his use of light, shadow and detail in his Hungarian River Cruise slideshow.

 

Margaret put on the fourth in our series of Art Composition episodes, this time covering the Rule of Thirds and delving heavily into Da Vinci's Golden Section and the Fibonacci Spiral. It is interesting to see how classical art and modern photography corroborate their use of such compositional elements. The evening also included a discussion on Prime vs Zoom Lenses and how different camera/lens combinations can affect resulting optical performance. We recommend going to DxOMark.com website if you are in the market for a new camera and/or lens to see how they measure up under test.

The evening also featured our audio-visual slideshows for our September club outing – the Picton Fair – and our September theme challenge which asked members to interpret compositional elements of Framing &/or Balance. The Picton Fair outing was held in the evening this time around and we received some remarkable images of carnival lights at night - sights that can only be seen/recorded by a camera (long exposure with tripods in tow!). Both of these slideshow images have now been uploaded to our Facebook page, in case you missed them.

The theme challenges for the upcoming two months are – A Splash of Colour for October and Rule of Thirds & Variants for November. Our outing for October will be held on Sunday October 18^th (2pm) at the Harry Smith Conservation area in Ameliasburgh – a nice easy Autumn walk in the park.

Late Summer Clean-up – September Meeting Recap

 

That's right – we finally swept away the dust & dirt from our cameras and reviewed how to use but not abuse our very precious photographic devices. We were pleased to have Douglas Banks - a professional camera repair technician – come in and spruce up a table-full of cameras. We have a lot of very happy shooters as a result of his efforts.

The meeting itself centered on a demonstration of HDR workflow by Glen Dobson who introduced us to his method of using layers and masks in Photoshop to fine-tune his final HDR images. Glen's easy-going style and his de-emphasis of the detailed technical aspects of the programs, made his presentation both educational and entertaining.

Our slideshows for the evening consisted of the Huyck's Point Trail outing from mid August and a trip to the Backcountry of Point Petre by a group of our members in early May. In addition we aired the August Theme challenge slideshow entitled – Anything Nautical – which has submissions from 23 different photographers. In total, 28 of our members contributed images for our September meeting – a very high participation rate! The outing and theme photos have been posted to our Facebook page.

Our theme challenges for the coming months are for September – Balance &/or Framing, and for October – A Splash of Colour. 

We've planned an outing/workshop for Thursday evening, Sept 24^th where we will have some fun with man-made lights in motion and do a little light painting in the dark. Hopefully we will get a nice sunset to boot! We will meet at/near Meyer's Pier on the Belleville waterfront at 6:30pm.

Thanks again for all who come and participate in our club activities.

August Meeting in Perspective

Thanks to all who weathered through a rather hot summer's evening this past Sunday. I hope you all got something useful out of it. The meeting included works from 23 or our members who contributed to one or more of our club outings or theme challenge. As a result we saw a great display and diversity of images. We had a couple of light/fun slideshows which included our Kingston Buskers Festival outing and the Wellington Bubblefest event. The impromptu Purdon Orchid outing was a unique opportunity to see so many Lady Slippers in full bloom in a natural setting.

The highlite of the evening was the sights, sounds and stories that five of our members brought back with them from recent weeklong photographic treks to Newfoundland with local photographic guide Phil Norton.  Daphne Creasy, Janice Ruggles-Bolton, Margaret Liddon, Ramesh Pooran and Marilyn Holland had some great images of very different scenery than that found in our samll part of the globe.

We also had a couple of educational/refresher sessions – one on ISO (thanks to Bert Jenkins) and one on the art compositional element of Framing (thanks to Margaret Liddon for that one). We ended the meeting with some wonderful images interpreting the month's theme challenge – Lead-In Lines. These images along with the Orchid and Buskerfest ones can now be found on our Facebook page for your viewing pleasure.

Upcoming events include a club outing at Huyck's Point scheduled for Sunday Aug 16^th. We also plan to cover the Picton Fall Fair in the evening of Friday Sept 11^th so do also put that date in your calendar.

Our theme challenges for the next 60 days have been handed out – August's is Anything Nautical  while September's will be Balance &/or Framing, picking up from a couple of our recent art compositional discussions.

Keep on Clicking!

Annual Print Display/Evaluation Meeting

On Sunday July 5th we held our once-a-year review of the printed image and what a great selection of images it was! We had 45 submissions that were displayed in our somewhat cramped quarters.

We had another great turnout to our meeting, including Mr. David Welsh who recently hosted our club members at the Model Train outing at his impressive facilities. He was there to see the initial slideshow of the night entitled – All Aboard - which included images and video from 15 of our members.

We next turned our attention to the age-old problem of how to evaluate a photograph. Using three main criteria – Technical Merit, Creative & Artistic Merit and Overall Impact – the total group was given the task of judging (in a friendly manner) the assembled images. At the end of the evening, a number of top scoring images were shown to the crowd and are also included in this blogposting.

As is our norm, the meeting was heavily weighed to displaying member images through the slideshow format. Kevin & Sheila Hanbury showed us a small part of their recent journey to an ancient and colourful part of Asia Minor in their video entitled Trippin Turkey. We then moved to a slideshow from a recent Nighttime & HDR workshop in Belleville that was attended by 13 of our members and led by Glen Dobson. It demonstrated how a city is transformed at night by all the multi-colour-temperatured lights that abound our streets. That, coupled with reflections in the water, made for a very lively and up-tempo slideshow.

Our final show of the night was our members' photographic interpretation of the Renewal theme challenge. Once again, we had lots of great submissions and these and the other member slides can now be viewed on our facebookpage.

Our upcoming theme challenges will be Lead-In Lines for July (due in by early August) and for August our theme will be Anything Nautical.

We have a fun club outing planned for this Saturday (July 11^th) at the Kingston Waterfront. It is their annual Buskers Festival and also their Saturday Market will be in full force. Please join us behind City Hall around 11:30AM.