Lacock Positive

Three's for the Crowd

We reviewed images from one of our Club Challenges, the subject 'Three' - these included images of wildlife, plants, still life, street photography and creative. A few examples below.

We also reviewed our various efforts at portraiture from a practical evening and also discussed the different ways we had processed them in post-production. What are the aims of a portrait? Do we shoot what we see or what the 'client' wants to see? How do we use the tools we have to greatest effect e.g. skin softening? Challenges we will be revisiting.

Two members presented images from living photographers with which they had made connection.

Philip M chose Joan Atkinson, an artist / photographer living in Maine, for her images of wildlife, cats and dreamy flowers, see https://www.flickr.com/photos/28961788@N05/

Howard chose two, Olga Karlovac for her monotone street photography

see https://www.olga-karlovac-photography.com/site/

and Chris Dale, for his creative landscapes,

see https://chrismdale.co.uk/

Vision and creativity were the linking factors in these choices and made us think that we too needed to experiment more. Guess we won't be running out of challenges anytime soon!

Next meeting: Review of Easter subject 'Spring', Club challenge 'Hats' among other things!

SUCCESS!

We enjoyed the second round of the 2018-2020 Tribattle with Corsham and Trowbridge Camera Clubs in Lacock Village Hall, judged by Sue O'Connell and Peter Brisley, and came away the winners for the second year running. Lacock came first in 15 out of the 20 rounds.

Below a selection of images from each of the contributors representing Lacock Positive. Well done everybody!

@ Phil Selby 2019 - Long Exposure

@ Danny Wootton 2019 - Coast

STARS IN OUR EYES!

We were given a very well illustrated and informative talk from our speaker for the night, Allen Lloyd (see http://www.allenlloyd.co.uk), called Starry Nights.

Allen advised the best months for photographing the Milky Way was from now until the end of September, between the preferred hours of 10.30 pm - 6.30 am. He described the different techniques needed for taking star trails, super moons, landscapes by moonlight, split shots, stacked images and panoramas.

Many of Allen's images were from the least light-polluted areas of South and Mid Wales, but a few from other dark areas such as La Palma in the Canaries.

There is an useful way of finding dark areas - see
www.lightpollutionmap.info. Allen also recommended PhotPills app for location information and Starry Landscape Stacker for stacking images.

Next meeting:
Club challenges & shoot reviewed, plus talks on other photographers

SAYING CHEESE

We had a practical session on Portraiture with one of our members, John, providing both a backdrop and studio lighting. Arrangements had been made with two work colleagues to be our 'models' for the night and they kindly endured our directions of 'this way, that way'. John also guided us on what camera settings to use and how to achieve different results by moving the studio light and using different light settings.

NEXT MEETING:
Allen Lloyd will speak on 'Starry Nights'

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION!

We reviewed all the images that members had submitted for the forthcoming Tribattle and announced those that came top in the voting for each category - Bad Weather, People at Play, Long Exposure, Vegetables, Horse(s) in action, Shadows, Coast, Small matters, Past and Present, Wildlife in their Natural Habitat. Some categories attracted lots of submissions, others proved more challenging to satisfy. We will have to wait and see how we get on.....

Comments on individual images were welcomed including suggestions for improvements, particularly on cropping and cloning. Interesting to hear where we had taken images too. Comments were made about the difference seeing images projected onto a large screen and the smaller ones we see on our home computer screens. Scale certainly exposes areas for improvements!

Next meeting:
Member's presentation on Around the World Trip
Practical session on Portraiture