On Safari - August Meeting

We had another great turnout on a warm summer night in the bustling little village of Wellington!

We decided to devote the majority of our first half to a visual Safari in Africa. Mike Gaudaur, who has spent 15 years working, teaching and living in Central Africa (Kenya), gave us both an educational and artistic portrayal of the haunting countryside and its many impressive wildlife inhabitants. Mike’s ability to get up close & personal with his subjects, along with shooting from a low height, resulted in magnificent portraits of African wildlife – lions, elephants, zebras, giraffes, monkeys, cheetahs, ... Mike also employs some unique processing techniques to produce highly creative and effective portraits of his subjects. 

Prior to Mike's extended Safari discussion, we aired a slideshow of the Tall Ship event held in Bath earlier in July. Sixteen members submitted images of those majestic sea vessels, including some that employed antique processing, to allow us to re-kindle that historic era.

The meeting's second half opened up with a slideshow from Larry Tayler documenting a recent trip to Australia. Larry has a unique eye to capture the sights and very fabric of the Australian community at large. His slideshow was upbeat, with a few twists and humorous elements for us all to enjoy. 

The next agenda item was a presentation by Dave Tugwood's recap of our Light Up The Night workshop. held on the Belleville waterfront, last month. Dave discussed many of the learnings from the night – especially the need to know how to operate and how to manually focus your camera. Both of these activities are much more difficult under the darkness of night! He showed images of the many light painting activities we employed that night, as well as our attempts at capturing the evening’s elusive sunset. Dave followed up with a short slideshow of images submitted from 15 workshop participants. For those of you who want to try light painting, see Dave’s presentation which has been posted to the club’s Youtube site.

Our theme challenge slideshow My Canada featured submissions from 24 of our members. An impressive array of images from shore to shore, celebrated all that is great about our homeland – especially on its 150^th anniversary. These images have been uploaded to our public Facebook page for your viewing pleasure (as have the Tall Ship outing images).

Our upcoming theme challenge for August is Summer Fun, while September’s theme is entitled Play Fair at the Market.  In addition, our club outing this month will occur Saturday, August 19^th to Jones Falls on the Rideau Canal system.

July Print Display & Evaluation

Our annual print display and evaluation was held this past Sunday. Twenty-three members brought in a total of 44 images to be assessed by their peers. Subject matter varied widely from a lonely owl in the forest to big city locales. One thing that didn’t vary widely was the consistently high quality of the images on display. 

John Dufour took the lead in prepping everyone to be judges – along with teaching us to see the “gorilla” in the room with all else going on! John proposed a much simpler scoring mechanism this year that greatly simplified the process. That, along with the generosity of the Library which allowed us to utilise the upstairs hall, made the logistics so much simpler.

Our club outing slideshow was from our June trip to SprindleTree Gardens. Images from 10 of our members depicted flowers, butterflies, humming bird moths and the many interesting structures at that facility located near Tamworth, Ontario.

John next picked up on the judging theme by giving us an overview of his experiences with judges in photo competitions. The moral was that many things have to align correctly for your image to be selected in such competitions.

With this month’s Architecture theme challenge, we had Mike Montgomery discuss the issue of Image Distortion – Optical and Perspective – and how these errors could be easily corrected in one’s photo-editor of choice. Mike’s presentation will be uploaded to our YouTube channel for review purposes.

Our theme challenge slideshow Architecture featured submissions from 30 of our members. An impressive array of images from all across the globe were on display and have now been uploaded to our public Facebook page for your viewing pleasure (as have the SpindleTree images).

The final item of the evening was to review the top 12 images - each having amassed an average score of 8 or more out of 10 by the collective members. I think most were in agreement that the judging process had allowed the cream rise to the top – so to speak. That said – all entrants were the real winners on this night.

The theme challenges for July is entitled My Canada – What Makes My Canada Great and for August it is simply entitled – Summer Fun.

June Meeting Now in the Books!

Our June 4^th meeting was another success. We had excellent turnout and another super participation level by you all. We even managed to stay withing our allotted time for the evening!

Bert started the meeting by discussing a common problem for many of us who try to print images. The prints just turn out too dark as compared to our perfectly satisfactory images on our computer monitors. Bert’s solution is to move the centre (1.0) “Level” control to the 1.25-1.35 range prior to printing to achieve the effect you want for your printed image.

Our May outing slideshow was entitled Springtime in Presqu’ile et al... Images from eleven of our members depicted the Spring arrival of a large number of our feathered friends along with other emerging elements of Spring.

Our next discussion item was a primer to Flash Photography by Mike Montgomery and Dave Tugwood. Mike took us through the basics of TTL (Through-the-Lens metering) flash photography and how you could use it to best advantage. Dave followed up with examples and discussion of different types of flash set-ups – Direct On-Camera, Bounce, Off-Camera and Multiple Flash. We are all a lot more comfortable with using this tool following a healthy discussion of the topic.

The second half of the meeting started with a slideshow that recapped our Portrait Workshop held last month at St Mary Magdelene Church Parish Hall. We had a lot of fun at the workshop, and the slideshow and accompanying audio track took a little liberty with the overall frivolity of the session. At the same time, the workshop attendees learned a lot and took some excellent images of their fellow members and of our two special guest models – Penny and Roanna Kitchen. Many thanks to both of them for their patience and perserverence with the rest of us.

We next had six of our members (Glen, Jennifer, Ian, Daphne, Mike G and Terri) each present one of their images and tell us the What, Why, How, ... The images were fantastic and we all enjoyed listening to the stories behind the images along with why and how they ended up the way they did.

Our theme challenge slideshow was entitled The Awakening and received submissions from 27 of our members. Most of the images concentrated on a spring like interpretation, with a few humourous and creative twists thrown in for good measure. A number of really stunning images were on display. These images, along with our outing photos are now available for viewing on our public Facebook page.

The meeting concluded with theme challenges for the next 60 days - Architecture for June and Canada 150 - What Makes My Canada Great for July.

May Meeting - A Return to our Artistic Roots

Forty people attended our May club meeting along with a record 38 people submitting images for the night’s many slideshows. Images came from members trekking both near & far, including a number from the other side of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.

Our meeting started with a discussion of Bokeh – a Japanese word meaning “blur”. We discussed how artistic Bokeh could enhance your image with a nice soft & smooth background that allows the viewer’s eye to concentrate on the sharply focused subject.

The first slideshow of the night depicted the brave and partially insane residents of Port Hope, Floating their Fannies Down the Ganny! Very few boats or watercraft were able to stay afloat on the fast moving, icy waters of the Ganaraska River. It was all done in a light-hearted festive atmosphere with thousands of supporters cheering them onwards. The show was highlighted with some timely video by Caspar of a number of (un)fortunate dunkings!

Our next agenda item was a collaborative effort from Dave, Ramesh & myself to help us all keep informed and to upgrade our photographic and artistic skills/knowledge. Dave took On-line Tools & Sources while Ramesh followed up with Photo Apps for your Phone/Tablet. I picked up a catch-all other category of learning sources. This information is available on our Youtube channel to better assist everyone with their individual needs in this area.

The second half of the meeting belonged to Margaret. First, she started with her slideshow entitled My Ireland – a glimpse through her eyes of her beloved homeland taken during a trip to the emerald isle last September.

Margaret also put on another episode of her The Art of Seeing series. This time around it was focused on Abstract Photography. She discussed the various elements of the Abstract, from line, shape, texture, pattern and colour. She discussed how they could be utilized to create unrecognizable (or, at least, difficult to recognize) subject matter. The key was to think outside the box and to train your eye to see the abstract in an everyday scene. Her presentation was adorned with some great imagery, including a number of images from others in our membership.

Our theme challenge slideshow was split into two 10 minute segments featuring some tremendous Water on the Move ... imagery. As previously mentioned 38 individuals submitted images interpreting this powerful and relevant theme. These images, along with our Port Hope outing photos are now available for viewing on our public Facebook page.

The meeting concluded with theme challenges for the next 60 days- The Awakening for May and Architecture for June. The club outing for May will take place Saturday May 13^th at Presqu’ile Provincial Park to capture some of our tiny migrating avian friends on their trip northward. Also a special Portrait Workshop session is planned for Friday May12th at the parish hall of St Mary Magdelene Anglican Church in Picton. This is a unique opportunity for all of us to utilize professional studio set-ups with our own cameras in tow.

April Club Meeting - What you missed!

Our meeting on Sunday was very well attended and we once again received great support and participation from many of you. In total, 36 of us submitted images for the night’s slideshows and presentations.

The session started with Ramesh presenting a summary of the latest array of Mirrorless Camera offerings, explaining their advantages/disadvantages relative to a standard DSLR. Excellent fodder for anyone currently looking to upgrade their camera equipment!

Our outing slideshow depicted a trip to the Frink Centre on what turned out to be one of the colder days of the winter, even though it was mid-March. Fifteen of us made the trek and captured some interesting and varied subjects ranging from an Indian Teepee and frozen forest to a busy beaver and even a great grey owl.

Our main presenter of the night was Mike Montgomery who introduced us to the Use of Layers in graphics editing, using Adobe Photoshop as his preferred application. The purpose was to get a good understanding of the basics – how layers worked and how you could use them to improve your imagery. The tutorial has been uploaded to our Youtube channel. Mike was not finished though, as he opened the second half of our meeting with a slideshow entitled The Bohemian Experience depicting the photographic wonder of areas of the Czech Republic and Austria.

Next on the Agenda was a tag-team presentation on Five Great Canadian Photographers, picking up from an on-going theme over the past year. Margaret discussed the work of Yousuf Karsh and Roberta Bondar, Bert discussed Freeman Patterson and I handled Edward Burtynsky and John Rowlands. All five have very unique photographic styles and subject matter, and all are well recognized in their respective fields.

Our final slideshow of the night covered our theme challenge - Shadows & Silhouettes. Thirty-three individuals submitted a wonderful array of images interpreting this theme. The individual images for this and our Outing slideshow have been uploaded to our public Facebook page.

The meeting concluded with providing theme challenges for the next 60 days- Water on the Move ... for April and The Awakening for May.

March Meeting - an Overview

We've now entered our fifth year of operation and our meetings keep getting bigger and better – although this one also ran a little longer than we had expected. The meeting covered a lot of topics starting with a discussion by Mike Montgomery of the inevitability of precious data/image loss and how to provide Backup protection. This is an important subject that we will address in more detail at a future meeting.

The evening really started to get interesting with a session entitled – Processing By Others. Following a short introduction from Ansel Adams, five of our advanced photographers (Doug Smith, Mike Montgomery, Marilyn Sprissler, Dave Tugwood & Chris Ward) took up the challenge which involved submitting one raw file image and having it processed by all five of them. Even they were surprised (and somewhat amused) by the results. It really was facinating how different, yet effective, each of the images were processed. Ansel would have been proud of the resulting “performances” of the raw file “scores”.

As usual, slideshows dominated the night’s agenda starting with our club outing to the Ranney Gorge area near Campbellford. Freshly fallen snow covered an icy trail with many a spill along the way – but that didn’t get in the way of some excellent image taking. Daphne Creasy and Janice Ruggles-Bolton treated us to a very different landscape with their Canyons & Beyond show featuring exotic scenery of Utah, Arizona and Nevada from their trip last fall to the area. Our theme challenge slideshow of the evening once again was so well subscribed that it had to be split into two sections. Thirty-three members contributed over 250 images in total to the Our World – First in Colour, Then in Black & White/Polychrome theme. The club outing slides, along with Part 1 and Part 2 theme slides have been uploaded to our public Facebook page.

The main presenter of the night was Chris Ward who took us through his Panorama techniques and processing wizardry to arrive at those large high definition images that he is becoming very well known for. We learned everything from how to avoid parallax to an extensive discussion of the use of layers and useful plugins for Adobe Photoshop. Chris talked to numerous examples of his work including one that took well over 100 individual images for the impressive pano. Chris produces beautiful works of art that take a lot of planning, execution and processing prowess.

The meeting concluded with providing the theme challenges for the next 60 days- Shadows & Silhouettes for March and Water on the Move ... for April. 

Thanks to all those who came out and especially to those who participated during the past month.