Starting Up 2019 in Style

We kicked off our first meeting of 2019 with record high participation from 48 of our members.  Fifty people attended the session and they got to witness some incredible imagery from our members.

The meeting started with an upbeat and colourful slideshow of images from our club outing to the Firelight Lantern Festival, held annually every November in Picton. The costumes were loud and bright, the lanterns were a feast for our camera lenses and the music was “shall we say” unusual!

Next up was a intriguing feature presentation from Ian Dickinson – our birder extraordinaire.  Ian explained how birding and photography changed his life, as he retired from the office cubicle and learned to see, hear and appreciate the world of nature at his doorstep.  Ian discussed the when, where and how to best photograph the many tiny avian creatures in our vicinity. Throughout, Ian used wonderful images of the various types of birds and described when they were likely to arrive on our migratory doorstep. Ian’s bird photography can be found on-line by visiting his website – photobirding.net.

Our second half was dominated by the almost 300 images, submitted from 48 members to the Portfolio Picks challenge.  The images are very impressive and demonstrate the creative juices that run amok within the artistic veins of our membership! The slideshow was shown in two separate sections. The images (along with the Firelight Lantern Festival images) are available for public viewing at our Facebook page.

In between the two slideshow parts was our Annual “Show & Tell”.  A number of interesting gadgets, including Litra Torch light cube, the Ultimate Lens Hood, white balance lens attachment, several Olympus OMD-EM1 Mark II’s, a birding camera aiming device, winter cleats, lens adaptor for older analogue lenses, versatile head lamp, flash pattern projection device, photo book, mottled glass for creative portraits etc,. ... 

Our theme challenges for the next two months are Winter Fantasy for January and Mono Plus One (colour) for February. Our outing for January will be held Saturday Jan 12th at the Frink Conservation Area just north of Belleville.

Thanks to all who came out and especially to those that contribute images to make our meetings so enjoyable.