Lacock Positive 30th January 2025

This evening was given over entirely to a presentation by an external speaker, Austen O'Hanlon who has a YouTube channel.

He started off by introducing himself and briefly going over his career to date.  He then discussed GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome.  He said:

  • Keep it simple - "better" gear won't (necessarily) allow you to take better photos
  • Buy (only) what you need
  • Buy second-hand
  • The best camera is the one you have in your hand
Photography gear is important.  If you keep it to a minimum, there is less to carry.  If there is less to carry, you can walk further and be less tired.  If you are less tired when you get to taking a photo, you can put more effort into it and thus get a better result.  To this end, his camera gear has been cut down to the bare minimum:
  • (Shimoda) Backpack
  • One mirrorless camera body
  • One lens (24-120)
  • GoPro (for blogging)
  • Mini tripod, or
  • Larger tripod, depending on the trip
  • (Lee) Filters - 10 stop, 6 stop and 3 stop NDs, 3 stop ND grad, polariser
He said our cameras should be extensions of our bodies and no camera setting should take more than 20 seconds.

We then briefly discussed AI - a subject with which we are recently familiar given the Zoom call on 2nd January.  He pointed out a recent landscape photography competition winner used an AI generated image - not admitted to until the awards had been given out.

He pointed out that any and all AI is banned at GCE and A level.  He himself would never use AI on a photo and would even leave litter in a photograph if he had happened to include it.  He said it is important to record what is there, even if you get up for a sunrise and it doesn't happen to be a "good" one.

Austen transitioned from street photography to landscape photography and found that many of the essential elements (consideration of light and shade, direction of light, etc.) were the same in both.

Porlock Flood © Austen O'Hanlon

He went on to talk about Porlock Marsh, where at high tide, the water can flood in over the course of a half hour.  If you attempt to photograph here, you will have to be prepared to wait for at least an hour for the water to subside again making it possible to leave.  There is only one place to stand that remains above water, without getting very wet.

Black Church Rock © Austen O'Hanlon

Austen gave a shout out to Black Church Rock, and, in fact practically anywhere on the coast of Devon - especially Hartland Point, which can be worthy of photography even in a storm.  With Black Church Rock he stressed the importance of getting there at low tide, as the entire beach is covered otherwise.

Mist from Solsbury Hill © Austen O'Hanlon

© Austen O'Hanlon

© Austen O'Hanlon

© Austen O'Hanlon

Our next meeting will be on 13th February.

Lacock Positive 16th January 2025

This was our first face-to-face meeting of the year (our January 2nd meeting being held over Zoom).  After Julia, our Chair, reminded us about the WCPF (Western Counties Photographic Federation), we continued with a talk on "Shutters" given by Tony Bamford of our own parish.

He covered:

  • How shutters work (two curtains, called "first" and "second", or alternatively "front" and "rear")
  • How, for short exposures, the second curtain "chases" the first, leaving a narrow gap
  • How, for really short exposures, this narrow gap really is very, very narrow
  • Rolling shutter
  • Using flash with various shutter speeds
  • First curtain vs. second curtain flash (with thanks to Brian the snail, for making a guest appearance)
  • The way sensors write their data
  • Sensor write speeds for various modern day cameras
  • Taking photos using Electronic First Curtain shutter
  • Taking photos using the electronic "shutter"
  • Taking photos in "mechanical shutter" mode
  • and finally... Global shutters and the Sony A9III
The links for the talk were:
Although the last of these would seem to be only for Fujifilm cameras, it works for any kind of mirrorless camera.

We then reviewed our "One picture one month" submissions for December:


© Amanda Gregory

Christmas by the Sea © Ann Horne

Corsham Court © Brendan Whyte

December Winter Trees © Caroline Howe

Bosak Family © Craig Purvis

Lacock at Christmas © Danny Wootton

Baldies Barber Shop © David Sage

1st Sunrise after Solstice © Derek Liversidge

© Helen Day

Blowing Bubbles © Julia Lloyd-Parks

© Lesley Cadger

© Phil Selby

© Philip Male

© Rob Macklin

Lola © Roger Parry

Wisley © Rose Porfirio

Snowy Smile © Sue Power

Bottle Photography © Tony Bamford

We then reviewed the results for our letter "N" challenge:

N for Nautical © Amanda Gregory

N for Nets © Ann Horne

N for Nails © Caroline Howe

N for Not Impressed © Craig Purvis

N for Neoprene Head to Toe © Danny Wootton

N for Nose © Derek Liversidge

N for Niagara © Helen Day

N for New Zealand © Julia Lloyd-Parks

N for Nightscape © Lesley Cadger

N for The Needles © David Sage

N for Negative © Pam Bamford

N for Northumbria © Philip Male

A special shout-out to Rob Macklin for using AI to generate these two images:

N is for Nails (generated using Leonardo) © Rob Macklin

N is for Nettle (generated using Leonardo) © Rob Macklin

N is for Narrowboat © Rose Porfirio

N is for Naughty © Ruth Baldwin

N is for Nuts © Sue Power

N is for Nunny Castle Ruin © Tony Bamford

Our next meeting will be on January 30th

Lacock Positive 2nd January 2025

 Remembering the events of early January 2024, when Lacock Village was flooded and only a few of us could reach the Village Hall (and fully expecting the same to happen this year) we took the decision to devote this evening to a zoom call from our homes.

The call was hosted by Joe Houghton with a talk entitled Photography in an AI world

He started by discussing the results Leonardo AI had given him using a prompt of "A pensioner photographer taking a photo using a futuristic looking camera of a high-tech urban city".

"pensioner photographer taking a photo..." as generated by Leonardo AI

He then showed images generated by CoPilot AI using exactly the same prompt:

"pensioner photographer taking a photo..." as generated by CoPilot AI

This prompted a discussion of how biased this particular AI was towards white, male, bearded photographers which is, as Joe explained, a symptom of the images used to train the AI.

By way of comparison, I tried exactly the same prompt in the beta version of Photoshop, which employs Adobe's much vaunted Firefly.  There are dozens of options, and choosing some fairly randomly, it came up with these:

"pensioner photographer taking a photo..." as generated by Firefly via Photoshop

"pensioner photographer taking a photo..." as generated by Firefly via Photoshop

"pensioner photographer taking a photo..." as generated by Firefly via Photoshop

The cities aren't particularly futuristic looking, but Firefly's bias doesn't seem to be towards male bearded photographers.

Joe then quoted from an article he wrote for the RPS in June 2023 saying there's only one way to resolve the issue of AI in photography... ban any image being submitted to any competition shot or processed on a digital camera.

He then outlined a timeline:
  • Between 15,000 and 17,000 years ago: The Lascaux cave paintings appeared showing life, colour and movement
  • 1st Century BC: Frescos at Pompeii show realism
  • 1130: "Cloudy Mountains" by Mi Youren in China shows a landscape with depth
  • 1645: St Antoniuskapel, Utrecht, painted by Pieter Jansz, shows full perspective and converging lines
  • 1827: Heliograph on pewter, the first photograph ever taken
  • 1859: Twilight by Camille Silvy, a seamless composite of four negatives
  • 1998: First AI generated image
  • 2022: Jason Allen's AI-generated work wins the digital category with the image below at the Colorado State Fair
Théâtre_D’opéra_Spatial

The image was originally generated by Midjourney, it had a further 625 edits in Photoshop.  Although there was a great shout-out by "real" photographers at the time, there was nothing in the rules to disallow the submission.

So the question arises as to who cares whether an image is AI generated.  Clients don't - as far as they're concerned it's results that count... if they don't have to pay a photographer, then that's even better.  So who does care?  The answer seems to be only those judging image competitions, of which wildlife is the worst, having the most restrictive rules where zero edits/alterations are allowed.

The LENSA app can create photorealistic images from an uploaded phone image.  It has a darker side as it (and other apps) can produce sexualised images.

An image enhanced using LENSA

A recent survey revealed that websites allowing users to create explicit content were visited more than 18 million times from Japan,
and Japan is in 3rd place behind India and the USA in terms of website visits.

We then saw:
  • A deepfake real-time video of someone morphing into various well-known people
  • The facebook page of Emin Kuliyev whose images of people backlit by the setting sun were all AI generated
  • The winning image from an Australian competition which was later admitted to be completely AI generated
  • The "outing" of a popular Instagram photographer revealed as an "AI fraud"
  • The Sony World Photography Award winner who refused the award, admitting his image was AI generated - the competition judges didn't even notice how the hands were deformed.
Joe then discussed how AI is making its presence known more and more in digital cameras themselves.  The new Olympus OM cameras will have AI controlled:
  • Autofocus
  • Subject detection
  • Focus stacking
  • Exposure bracketing
  • Blended high resolution (pixel shifted) images
  • Neutral density filters, up to 10 stops
  • Live view graduated filters (hard or soft)
In addition, phone manufacturers are lauding the ability of their products to blend images in camera to create composite shots. Camera manufacturers are introducing AI to analyse a scene and automatically adjust exposure, focus, white balance and ISO for an optimal image.  Smartphones add features like bokeh, night mode and object recognition.

Websites like My Heritage use AI to enhance and colour, old black and white images:



then, as if that wasn't already enough, the site can use deepfake technology to make ancestors speak.

HEDRA can be used with an uploaded image and a voice track to create a lip-synced video.
Both CANVA and Photoshop can extend images.  Topaz Gigapixel can upscale images and add detail that wasn't there in the original.  You can design faces with AI.

With those thoughts buzzing around our heads, Joe ran out of time, leaving us to ponder the future.

Our next meeting will be on January 16th.