Monday 9 April 2018

April Meeting Sets New Heights


We had in excess of 50 people at our April 8th meeting. That number was almost matched by the 30 individuals who participated in our club outing for the month and the 40 members who contributed images to our theme challenge. These are fantastic participation numbers and indicates a great level of enthusiasm for photography in the County & surrounds!

The meeting started with a slideshow from our Honey Wagon Farms outing last month. This property, located just outside of Picton, has wonderful trails though productive maple forests and rows of tall pines as well as thick white birch stands. Scattered throughout were old farm and agricultural relics from years long gone by. It was a virtual treasure trove of items to be found and photographed. And to touch it off was an idyllic “sugar shack”, where our host Ed Taylor was busy boiling maple sap which had been collected using traditional tree taps and buckets. Several of our members stayed until night fell upon the property in order to get some unusual shots of the sugar shack in the dark using stobes and gels.

Margaret Liddon was our feature presenter of the evening with another in her series of The Art of Seeing. This time, the title was A Roadmap to Better Composition, where Margaret picked up from John Dufour’s human eye/mind perception presentation this past February. Margaret stressed the need to train our eyes and to focus on line, shape, texture & form rather than on the specific subject matter. She proposed a 20 point roadmap for us to consider when taking as well as when processing our images to end up with a more artistically attractive image.

Mary & Dave Robinet aired their slideshow on Hawaii from from a recent vacation on the island of Kauai. Needless to say, the imagery was awe-inspiring and, with both of them being sports advocates, we got to witness some great surfers at peak wave action.

Dave Tugwood discussed ways to Modify the Light in order to get better images. He demonstrated the use of reflectors, diffusers, shapers and gels. Even though he was hampered by a very poor model (yours' truly!), he was still able to impart the message that by adding or modifying the light available, you can significantly improve your images. It doesn’t need to be expensive – get a flash, reflector and go out and experiment.

The theme challenge this month received almost 200 entries from 40 individual members, so it was split into two sections. Fifty Shades of Grey was the topic with lots of great monochrome imagery on display. These images, along with the outing photos have been uploaded to our public Facebook account. In addition, the two presentations are being uploaded to our Youtube channel.

The theme challenges for the next two months have been assigned – for April, Everyday Items with a Twist! (due at the end of the month) and for May, Fresh Start.

Thanks to all who attended and participated with us in our photographic endeavours!