Lacock Positive

9th May

This evening started with a review of the exhibition and a few of the comments visitors wrote on their voting forms. We discussed how wide our audience was, having visitors from places as varied as Australia and Iceland.

Many visitors asked how much Photoshop manipulation had been done on some of the images - there was actually surprisingly little. We wondered how best to communicate this in future years.

Then we moved on to a review of images taken in April:

Callenish Stones © Amanda Gregory

Towering Bluebells © Craig Purvis

Avebury morning © Derek Liversidge

Bluebells © Graham d’Aucourt

Puerto Banus © Helen Day

White Tailed Eagle © Julia Lloyd-Parkes

We then continued with a talk given by Tony Bamford, of our own parish, on Macro Photography. This was a prelude to an upcoming photo challenge, photographing plants and flowers in Amanda's garden on Saturday 11th.

He discussed:

Close up filters
Extension tubes
Fully connected bellows
Lens reversal
Macro lenses
Lensbaby offerings
Exotic probe lenses

Moving on to lighting options he then discussed the various merits of using LED lights vs flash and the different systems offered by different manufacturers.

The talk then moved on to the most challenging aspect of macro photography, the lack of depth of field. Diffraction was mentioned (a good reason to never use f/32) finally ending with the merits of focus stacking and a shout-out for Helicon Focus, which somewhat leaves Photoshop in the dust when blending those focus stacked images.

Our next meeting will be on 24th May.

3rd and 4th May

The Bank Holiday weekend saw the annual club exhibition, held at Lacock Village Hall, where over the course of two days we had roughly 750 visitors:

It also saw the one "competitive" thing the club does for the whole year, which is to ask visitors to vote for their favourite three images as they walk around. There are no prizes, except for bragging rights for the next 12 months.

The winners, in reverse order were (drum roll please)...

In tenth place:

Enchanted Wood © Phil Selby

In ninth place:

Taking a bow © Pam Bamford

In eighth place:

The Furry Forager © Philip Male

In seventh place:

Fighting Starlings © Tony Bamford

In sixth place:

Flash of Blue © Rose Porfirio

In fifth place:

Icelandic Horses © Tony Bamford

In fourth place:

Wings of Gold © Phil Selby

In third place:

Fish Supper © Pam Bamford

In second place:

Milky Way © Caroline Howe

And in first place, showing us all how it's done:

Mr and Mrs © Philip Male

Congratulations to the winners. Our next meeting will be on Thursday 9th May.

25th April

This evening Hilary Stock gave two presentations, part one entitled "Beyond the Lens - Adventures with my Camera".

When Hilary first approached art galleries to promote her work, she was flatly told "we only take art". To help persuade photography is art, she developed a technique of printing an image in the middle of an A4 sheet, then carefully folding it into a box, before mounting it in a frame.

Portscatho Boat © Hilary Stock

Although this created a unique 3D look, it was an incredibly time consuming and error prone procedure and the deep handmade frames (with their non reflective glass) were very expensive.

Turning away from art galleries, she sought hotels in the process of being extended, knowing they would be looking for something with which to decorate their new real estate. When a hotel owner offered to showcase her work for sale, she felt "people didn't go on holiday to buy art". It turned out they do, and she was suddenly overwhelmed with orders.

Producing each folded paper image was so labour intensive, she looked for an alternative means to bring her 3D look to her work. Eventually she chose to move to "floating images", printing onto card, then mounting cards at different depths within the frame:

Into the Woods II © Hilary Stock

She set herself a goal of mastering street photography, first photographing local people, which developed into a project to document life at a local cattle market. Initially she was met with some apprehension as the farmers suspected she might be an animal rights activist. Once they realised this wasn't the case, she was able to get images that both she, and they, were pleased with:

Cirencester Cattle Market © Hilary Stock

She also photographed families:

Portrait © Hilary Stock

She even turned her photographic eye towards seaweed, which she assured us, can't be transported anywhere and must be photographed (on a lightbox) fairly immediately after collection:

Cornish Seaweed IV © Hilary Stock

Purple Trio © Hilary Stock


Towan Treasure © Hilary Stock

... as well as seeds...

Seeds © Hilary Stock

Hilary became an official "behind the scenes" photographer at Womad:

Adult Dance Class, Womad © Hilary Stock

Children's Dance Class, Womad © Hilary Stock

Part two of Hilary's talk was entitled "Thriving through Venture". She became involved with teenagers in danger of being drawn into the NHS Mental Health programme. Introducing them to photography increased their ability to interact with people and increased their self confidence.

TTV Teaching © Hilary Stock

She was able to organise an exchange programme with her twinned town of Gunjur in Gambia - an environment in which her group was able to thrive.

Thriving Through Venture © Hilary Stock

This was one of the most inspiring presentations we've seen at the club and made us all realise how sharing both photography and photographs with others can benefit both them and us.

This evening we covered three areas at our meeting. Ros Vickers gave a great talk on her trip to Bryce Canyon and Arches in Utah, plus we reviewed our One Photo One Month for March and our letter J challenge.

Here are four pictures from Ros' presentation

A small selection of our March photos

And finally a few from our letter 'J' challenge

Danny Wootton mentioned that The Moonwalkers exhibition at the Lightroom in Kings Cross, London is well worth a visit if you have an interest in the Apollo moon landings and photography.