April Meeting Review

We had one of our largest gatherings yet at the April meeting with members anxious to see anything resembling Spring and its welcome floral displays. Luckily, our guest speaker for the evening – Court Noxon – put on a vivid display of County wildflowers and other living things that we all hope will soon be the subject matter for many of our photographic exploits in the coming months. Court is the author of “Field, Forrest, Hedgerow – A hiker's wildflower guide for Prince Edward County”. Besides being a naturalist, Court is also an avid photographer and put on an artistic view of flora and fauna in this region. Court also has a very helpful website (www.wildflowers-pec.on.ca) that is geared to assist in the identification and understanding of wildflowers that inhabit the County.

We also saw a splendid display of the landscape and unique wildlife of the Galapagos Islands by Bert Jenkins, from a trip he made to the area in 2009. Member slideshows from our recent trip to Honey Wagon Farms and our March theme challenge - Still Life – were also well received – these two shows have now been uploaded to our facebook site (www.facebook.com/countyfotoclub) for your viewing pleasure. The club would like to extend a very warm thank you to Sandi and Ed Taylor who graciously allowed us to tour and photograph their wonderful property – Honey Wagon Farms.

In a continuing attempt to get to know each other better, we played a little game with the goal of matching up the (member) photographer with his/her image – in a test of photographic styles. The co-winners of this contest were Ramesh Pooran and Margaret Liddon with identical scores of 13 out of 18. The average score was more in the 50% range implying we probably have more work in front of us on this "get-to-know-each-other" bent! Ramesh received a gift - “Exploring Photography” - a historic BBC look at artistic photographers and their photographic styles. It is expected that this book will be passed around and shared with other members in the group over time.

In regards to our Still Life challenge, only 17 members participated this time around, down somewhat from recent club challenges. I'm guessing that the reasons were two fold. First, the subject matter may not immediately appeal to many of us who would prefer more active/expansive subjects – animals, people, landscapes, birds, … Second, to do this well, it took work! It wasn't just walking around with the camera and clicking the shutter. In most cases, you had to set up the display, move it (or arrange lighting) to where the subject could best be transposed onto film and finally, compose the image in the viewfinder often with camera on a tripod while taking the image. For some of us, it also required considerable post image processing to get rid of marks on glasses and annoying/unwanted reflections etc. However, I'd suggest that those who did not take part, really missed out on a learning and “pushing the comfort zone” exercise. Many of the submitted images where truly spectacular – especially from a lighting, physical composition and viewfinder composition standpoint. Please take a careful look at the facebook images as to how various photographers have used lighting for dramatic effect.

March - Maple in the County Outing

Our planned outing to Honey Wagon Farms (265 Sandy Hook Rd) is now confirmed for Sunday March 16^th at 1:30pm. We have the gracious approval of the owners to come on their property to take pictures. Looking at the weather forecast, it is projected to be sunny, but cold on Sunday – so the sap may not be running very much. Nevertheless, this property has some wonderful trails through the maple bush with lots of antiques and old farm implements along the way. They also use the conventional bucket method of sap collection, so there will be no ugly blue collection lines disrupting our photographs. Given the snow conditions, it would be wise to wear high winter boots and have your snow shoes in the car just in case you need them. Dress warmly – preferably in layers.

Below is a map of the location of Honey Wagon Farms - not far from the Waring House. Hope to see many of you there on Sunday and please take lots of pictures so that we can use them for a slideshow at our next meeting.

March Meeting Round-Up

Our March 2nd meeting was once again well attended. in spite of the formidable Oscar competition on the airwaves. In total, 24 members showed up, including two new attendees. As well, member participation in our sponsored events and theme challenges continues to rise. Twelve individuals contributed to our “County's Icy Shoreline” slideshow, while 23 members submitted pictures to the month's “Faces” theme challenge. Both of these sets of slides are available for viewing on our Facebook page at facebook.com/countyfotoclub.

Anna Lam entertained us with a slideshow entitled “Black and White and Red” which ably displayed her unique talent to make something extraordinary out of the ordinary things we pass by each day. Anna loves to desaturate colour in order to enhance the form, shadows and textures of her subject matter.

Alan Jenner put on an entertaining and informative photoshop workshop, focusing on four key graphic editing elements:

   - Making a Watermark and Saving it as a Brush Preset

   - Sharpening Tools in Photoshop

   - Layers and their Primary Uses

   - Using Layer Masks

Alan is in the process of finalizing videos for each of these four topics and they will be posted soon to our Youtube account.

Bert Jenkins and Margaret Liddon put on a presentation regarding this year's Clic Photo Show competition. They emphasized important changes made from prior year's shows and displayed a number of the winning and contending entries from previous years. The deadline for your entries is May 31st and more information can be had from the Clic website located at clicphotoshow.ca.

The March monthly theme challenge was handed down - “Still Life”. As usual, members are asked to send in images that have been taken during or near to the assignment period (March 2014). We request you send in preferably five images (with a maximum of 8 images) that have been watermarked with jpg's sized to approx. 1280 x 960 px. Try to keep the individual file size around 500kb each (cut back the jpg quality setting to about 90% or so) so that we can get the optimum benefit of good quality viewing and manageable file sizing. Ideally the files should be named as follows “YourName_Still Life1_DSC_0123.jpg” etc.

We are hoping to have an outing this month entitled Maple in the County and are just trying to confirm the availability of Honey Wagon Farms for Sunday March 16^th at 1:30pm. More on this later once it has been firmed up.

We plan to play a little guessing game at next month's meeting – trying to match our member photographers with images that they have shot. For this, we are asking that our contributing members send in one image (unwatermarked, taken at any time) that is typical of the style of photograph that they currently shoot/recently shown at the club. Only I and that photographer will know the true identity and we will see just how well our members are getting to know each other's photographic quirks and quarks! Please do not send in shots that purposely mislead, as this will defeat the purpose of the exercise. It should be a fun way of getting to know each other a little better.

February Club Meeting - Recap

Our February 2^nd meeting concentrated on winter photography – both the hazards and the splendours of this magical yet precarious time of the year. Just as well, as earlier that morning, Wiarton Willy saw his shadow indicating another 6 weeks of white photogenic backgrounds and chilly fingers for all of us here in Southern Ontario. Even with the competing football game, we had very good attendance and submissions of over 20 members to the Club Challenge. We got to wear our new “selfie” name badges for the first time and some people got quite creative. The meeting's agenda featured several short member slideshows including one by Tina Konecny on her recent Jack Frost visitation and one by Carol Quinn entitled “All Aboard” depicting a friend's elaborate model train set-up. On the education front, in addition to a Winter Photography workshop, we delved into the options and use of social media sites on the web for displaying, sharing and promoting our images for others to see. Eric Pierce put on an on-line/live demo focusing on Facebook as one of the primary sites for these activities. Two longer slideshows depicting our recent club outing at Macaulay Mountain Conservation Area and our January monthly theme challenge of “Ice & Snow” were shown. These have now been uploaded to the Club's facebook account located at facebook.com/countyfotoclub. Please go to the site and view these lovely images and you are welcome to share them with your family and friends for their viewing pleasure as well.  Here is a sampling:

Our next meeting will be March 2^nd at which time we will see the results of our new monthly challenge entitled “Faces”. We encourage you to be as creative as you wish in your submissions and interpretations to this theme. As usual, we ask for 5 to 8 images to be submitted by Feb 24^th, which we will assemble into a slideshow for all to see.

January Club Challenge & Outing

The monthly challenge for January is an appropriate subject matter for this time of year – namely “Ice & Snow”. You are asked to send in between 5 and 8 images that provide your interpretation of this theme. While we will readily accept some images from the recent ice storm, we have decided to limit those to a maximum of 3 so that we can actually have you out there with your camera during the interim to take some new and creative photos. You all know the sizing, file-naming and watermarking criteria by now. We'd appreciate receiving your entries by Monday, Jan 27^th and they will be included in the member slideshow for our next meeting on Sunday Feb 2^nd.

We are also planning a club photoshoot outing for Sunday, January 19th at Macaulay Conservation Area. We will meet at the Macaulay House parking lot on Church Street (Picton) at 1:30pm and will limit our excursion to the lower trails of the conservation area and surrounding area/buildings. Please bring appropriate apparel for the expected weather conditions. We look forward to seeing many of you next Sunday.

Happy shooting!

 

Feathered Friends That Recently Visited The County

On Christmas Day, I was fortunate enough to catch sight of this red-bellied woodpecker looking for his festive meal on an old maple tree in front of our house.  He was at the northern edge of his territory as he usually stays south of the border.  Not sure where this species gets their name from as they have just a hint of red on their bellies!




















On Dec 30th, Caspar Radden spotted this snowy owl in Wellington - probably enjoying the ice and snow that has brought our area to a near standstill.  Apparently due to an abundance of food, the snowies are quite numerous this year.  I'm still waiting for my first sighting though!




















Caspar also caught this Great Gray Owl a few days ago sitting on a wire between Bloomfield and Wellington.  Our eagle-eyed photographer rarely misses such an opportunity!

More information on bird sightings in the County area can be viewed on Terry Sprague's "Nature Stuff" website at naturestuff.net

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.