Merry Christmas to All ...

 
Just a little something for all of you for the holiday season as portrayed by a number of our talented members.  We wish you all a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful 2014.

2013 CFC Awards Show - The Best of the Best

On Sunday December 1st, we held our first annual CountyFotoClub awards show.  Our meeting place was transfixed into a festive party room with gourmet foods and plenty of beverages.  We had hundreds of festive images submitted by members along with music of the season playing in the background, all while we gorged ourselves on the sumptuous offerings brought in by the participants.

The meeting started off with a short slideshow by Janice Ruggles-Bolton entitled "Inferno".  It was a wonderful portrayal of the nighttime pumpkin extravaganza at Upper Canada Village.

The second half of our meeting was hosted by David Gilbert and myself, who proceeded to award 18 worthy photographers with trophies for their work during 2013.  David & I judged almost 2000 images that were submitted over the course of the year by club members.  For each of the major award categories, we narrowed it down to four finalists and provided our critique on each of those images.  The results were most impressive.  Here are the award winners along with their images:

1) Best Abstract - Contenders were Ramesh Poraan, Carol Quinn, Tina Konecny with the winner being Jo'anne Van Der Wyst for her "Meshed Veins"

 2) Best Old Relic - Contenders were Daphne Creasy, Gabrielle Holowacz, Jocelyne Cormier with the winner being Sam Serrano with his "Cycle of Time"

3) Best Macro - Contenders were Tina Konecny, Daphne Creasy, Ramesh Pooran with the winner being Robert Logan with his "Iridescent Beetle"

4) Most Prolific Photographer - A special award of merit was handed out to Caspar Radden for shooting more photos, covering more events and always being the first to join in club activities - and doing all this with a great eye for capturing unique shots especially in the wildlife arena.

5) Best Architecture - Contenders were Sam Serrano, Jocelyne Cormier, Gabrielle Holowacz with the winner being Ramesh Pooran for his image entitled "Blue Window"

6) Funniest Image - Contenders were Caspar Radden, Daphne Creasy, Jo'anne Van Der Wyst with the winner being Eric Pierce for his "Harvest Moon(ing?)"

7) Best Child - Contenders were Jo'anne Van Der Wyst, Inge Radden, Gabrielle Holowacz with the winner being Daphne Creasy with her image entitled "Painted Faces"

8) Best Floral - Contenders were Jo'anne Van Der Wyst, Margaret Liddon, Daphny Creasy with the winner being Connie Fowler with her image "Shooting for the Sky"

9) Keenest Photographer - This is another award of merit handed out to the photographer who attended and submitted photos to the most club sponsored events/themes during 2013.  Only one person had a perfect score on this criteria with that person being Margaret Liddon - our "keenest" photographer of 2013.

10) Best Pet/Farm Animal - Contenders were Tina Konecny, Carol Quinn, Gabrielle Holowacz with the winner being Anna Lam for her image "Peekaboo"

11) Best Monochrome - Contenders were Daphne Creasy, Connie Fowler, Anna Lam with the winner being Gabrielle Holowacz and her image entitled "Wash Day"

12) Sharpshooter Award - This award of merit goes to the photographer who consistently produces the sharpest, crispest focused and most detailed images - none other than "steady hand" Alan Jenner.

13) Best Action - Contenders were Daphne Creasy, Margaret Liddon, Anna Lam with the winner being Tina Konecny and her image "Summer Spray"

14) Best People/Portrait - Contenders were Robert Logan, Connie Fowler, Margaret Liddon with the winner being Alan Jenner for his "School Teacher" rendition.

15) Story Teller of the Year - A special award of merit went to the photographer who, through his story and virtual history lesson of early days in the County, provided us with a unique glimpse of our heritage.  The award was presented to Eric Pierce for his work on "The Grave dated February 31, 1860"

16) Best Wildlife - Contenders were Jo'anne Van Der Wyst, Caspar Radden, Ron Mace with the winner being Margaret Liddon for her image entitled "Chipmunk with Fall Leaves"

17) Best Landscape - Contenders were Ron Mace, Connie Fowler, Alan Jenner with the winner being Bert Jenkins for his image "Mossy Pond"

18) 2013 Image of the Year - Our final trophy for the night was presented for the image that had strong impact, told a story yet left much to the imagination.  It is an study of dark and light, of the past and the future, of certainty and the unknown.  It is an image that is technically sound while shot under very difficult lighting conditions.  The 2013 Image of the Year award goes to Ron Mace for his image entitled "Room at Burleigh Falls".

It was a fun night for our young club and 2013 was a wonderful kick-off year.  As a group we have accomplished much and great promise holds in store for the coming year.  We'd like to once again congratulate all our deserving award winners.  A job well done! Thank you all for your great work throughout the year.

CFC Awards Night on Sunday

The first annual CFC Awards (CountyFotoClub) Show will be held this coming Sunday, December 1st at 7pm in the Wellington Public Library. The evening will be a chance for us all to meet in an informal fashion while devouring some great "pot luck" food and beverages.  Numerous trophies are up for grabs and it will be a chance to celebrate the best that our club has produced during the past year.  We will have festive music playing while our favourite Christmas images will flash by on the big screen.   We hope to make the evening fun for all and an opportunity to get to know each other a little better.
Hope to see you all there!

November Club Meeting

On Sunday November 3rd, we held our monthly meeting which featured photographic work – both in digital and printed format – by a broad cross-section of our members. At the Club's October 19th Pumpkinfest outing, we had 16 club members in attendance, 14 of whom submitted images for the slideshow. Unfortunately, due to a computer/projector issue in the first part of our meeting, the images were marred by alien artifacts and also seemed to be dancing on the screen of their own accord. Be assured that the actual images were much more striking than those shown and they have been uploaded in all their splendour to our Facebook site for your viewing pleasure (www.facebook.com/countyfotoclub). Fortunately between changing computers for Bert's presentation and Eric's subsequent adjustments to the projector, we were able to enjoy the remainder of the meeting without a hitch.

 

Bert Jenkins put on a Landscape Photography Tutorial which described the tools and techniques that he uses in the field, to produce some spectacular images of our natural surroundings As Bert ably put it, once you have found a terrific subject then “mine it for all it's worth!” Bert graced his presentation with a “wide” swath of impressive images of numerous areas where he has extensively hiked, including the Adirondacks, the Bruce Peninsula, the Galapagos and more.

   

The “Fall Colour” theme challenge set a new record for member participation (with 27) and images submitted (approx. 180). The colours and subjects photographed were vivid and varied. Truly a wonderful portfolio of images celebrating this very special season in Eastern Canada. These images have also been uploaded to our facebook page. Here are a sample.

We tried something new at this meeting and had members come up and show two printed images and tell the group why they selected them for display. Once again we were very favourable surprised by the number of members who participated in this portion of the meeting. Listening to others talk about their images was enlightening and allowed for a real personal touch to each photographer's work. It also provided another forum to get to know each other a little better.

Next month's session is on December 1^st where we are going to have a “Pot Luck” seasonal get together along with the 2013 CFC (CountyFotoClub) Award presentations. In addition, we are asking each of you to send in by Monday Nov 25^th, ten images of the Christmas season. They can be taken recently or from your vast collection of prior year's images on this subject.  And yes, we did ask for 10 images as we plan to put together an extended slideshow that will loop while we enjoy some seasonal refreshments, snacks and good dialogue.  It should make for a fun evening.

Club Photoshoot - Pumpkinfest in Wellington

Saturday's outing (Oct 19th) is rapidly approaching and I do hope many of you will join us in Wellington for the annual Pumpkinfest.  The parade starts at 10:30 am and we plan to meet at that time in front of the church beside the park entrance. We can then decide whether it best to split up or go in smaller groups to capture the various activities.  I would expect we would be finished by early afternoon.

The weatherman doesn't appear to be fully cooperative, so do dress for the likelihood of showers.  Please don't be a "fair weather" photographer - some of the best images are taken under inclement weather conditions.

I will be asking for those that attend to send in 10-20 images for a slideshow on the event - like to have these images in by Thursday October 24th.

Look forward to seeing you on Saturday.

Full House - October Meeting

We had a full house at last night's (Oct 6th) club meeting. We put away all our hardware and technology concerns and instead focused our attention on the Art of Seeing as it relates to the photographic image. Margaret Liddon put on an informative presentation on the basic elements of visual design and the rules or guidelines of photographic and artistic composition. In all, Margaret covered seven basic design elements – shape, form, line, space, texture, pattern and colour – and 16 separate guidelines for consideration when composing your image. She aptly demonstrated these compositional features with a wonderful portfolio of her images.

 In the second half of the meeting, Tina Konecny demonstrated how to both utilize the guidelines while stretching the boundaries with a dazzling display of Creative Interpretation. Tina implored the assembled group to discover what most interests each one of them in their photographic pursuits and then go out and shoot, shoot, shoot! Don't be afraid to make mistakes or to do things in a non-traditional fashion.

 

Three slideshows were interspersed amongst the above art tutorials. We started the evening with a slideshow from over a dozen combined members who attended the Milford Fall Fair on Sept 14th. David Gilbert and myself put on a slideshow depicting the magnificent windows that adorn the walls of St Mary Magdalene Anglican Church, here in Picton. And the final slideshow was from 22 combined members who submitted images for our September theme challenge - “Relics of the Past”. Copies of the member slideshows have been uploaded to our facebook page (facebook.com/countyfotoclub) for review by those of you who missed attending the meeting.

The October theme challenge of “Fall Colours” has already been made know to the membership – so you will have had lots of time to produce some colourful and artistic images of this wonderful season for next meeting. The October club outing will once again be in Wellington on Saturday Oct 19^th to cover the annual Pumpkinfest. The parade starts at 10:30am with the weigh-off beginning at 12:30 pm. I do hope many of you will be in attendance to capture this event. I will collect images from those who show up and assemble a slideshow of the event for our next club meeting on Sunday, November 3^rd.

At the November meeting, we are asking each of you to bring along two prints for a quick “Show & Tell”. Each person will get 2 minutes to talk to the how/what/where and why of the captured images. Prints should be at least 8''x10'' in size and preferably not be framed. We had a presentation last month on Printing from Graham Chapman and this is our first broad attempt to explore this avenue as a club.

Hope all who attended the session enjoyed themselves and picked up a few ideas for continuous improvement in their photography.

Large Turn-out at September Meeting

Approximately 30 people were in attendance at our September 8th meeting.  Many were there to learn about printing images from Graham Chapman - the owner and operator of The Print Practice, a custom photo printing business in Bloomfield.  We learned about bleeds, trims, safe zones, RGB vs CYMK colorspace, sRGB vs Adobe RGB, resolution and editing priorities.  Graham discussed issues to consider and showed samples of printing options such as large format canvas, card stock and many others.  He also cautioned about potential conflicts between printer driver software and graphics image editing software (i.e. Adobe Photoshop). It was a very informative discussion for the assembled members.



Ramesh put on a tutorial on night photography, covering a broad range of topics including urban scenes, fireworks, twilight and shooting the stars.  He ended with a short but breathtaking display of images of the skies above us.  He discussed the required tools (really just a camera. tripod and flashlight) and the techniques - wide aperture, slow shutter speed and tips on how to focus in the dark.










Three slideshows were also on the agenda complete with sometimes suspenseful and other times "toe-tapping" music to accompany the images. Carol put together a delightful rendition of the Hillier Medieval Festival which included images from nine club members. The Mariner's Park/Little Bluff Conservation Area club outing was also put into a slideshow with photos from 11 different members.  And finally, the August Club Challenge - Olde Woods - included images from 21 different photographers.  The latter two groups of images have been posted to our Facebook page - so if you missed the meeting or want to revisit the images, please head on over to www.facebook.com/countyfotoclub to have a look!

The September Club Challenge was handed out - namely "Relics of the Past".  We also indicated that the October Challenge would be "Fall Colours" - given out a little early just in case mother nature decided to get a jump on the cool weather this year!  The September club outing (and subsequent slideshow) will be the Milford Fall Fair - Saturday Sept 14th.  The parade starts at 11:00 am and the show is on all day.  This is a typical rural Ontario Fall Fair and our goal is to capture the emotions and atmosphere from such a fun event. Hope to see many of you there.

All in all - a very enjoyable evening!