A "Twisted" May Meeting

Our May meeting was another well attended event with tremendous creativity and comical originality in many of the theme images that were on display.  The meeting hadn't even started when we blew a fuse in our main audio system.  Fortunately several of our local Wellington members rushed to help and we managed to jerry rig a back-up system for the night.

We also had a sensor cleaning clinic underway in our newly available front meeting room area.  Many thanks to Douglas Banks for lending his expertise to this very necessary Spring Cleaning chore.

Ramesh Pooran started off the session with a short, non-technical review of Macro Photography Basics. This was geared to getting us all in the right head-set for the warmer weather and the wildflowers and tiny, yet photogenic insects that spring to life.

The first slideshow of the evening was a reminder of the rough winter-like weather that we have just exited from.  With an ice-storm as our backdrop, eight of our members ventured out to Little Bluff Conservation Area to brave the elements and capture rough seas and an ice covered shoreline.


Next up was Mike Gaudaur, who gave a great discussion of numerous Printing, Matting and Framing options that we as photographers need to think about.  He had lots of examples of print medium (including glossy, metallic, matte, cotton, canvas and many fine art selections), mat options, archival printing and various glass and frame options. His message was to get us to think carefully about where our prints will be hung and for what purpose before we rush and print our image.

Alan Jenner kicked off the second half with a colourful and frigid display of images from the Hotel Glace - Ice Hotel in Quebec City from a few years ago.  His images were beautiful, but there didn't appear to be a lot of takers in the room to spend a night in one of the luxury suites!

Following a short introduction from Ansel Adams, four of our members (Margaret Liddon, Joe Leduc, Gail Hamilton & Dave Robinet) participated in our on-going Processing by Others agenda item.  Each of the four, anonymously supplied one raw file image that was processed by each of the participants. The results were then compared and discussed at the meeting.  Well the results were as expected, quite different  - all being very effective. Gail really brought the house down with one of her very humorous processing gems of civic workers shovelling out her mailbox!  Many thanks to all four participants for being such great sports.

Our final slideshow was from 33 of our members interpreting the theme challenge - Everyday Items with a Twist.  I had no idea we had such a warped sense of humour amongst our members!  I'll never look at a lot of Everyday Things the same way, ever again!  Great creativity here and a real lot of fun.

In wrapping up, we set the theme challenges for the next 2 months - Fresh Start for May (due at the end of the month) and Sweet Light for June. In addition, we discussed an upcoming Fitness & Glamour Workshop that will be held mid July with 2 professional models on the shores of Lake Ontario at Point Petre.  We have a limited number of spots and we're filing them up on a first-come first-served basis.

Thanks to all for participating - it's what our club is all about!