Get your thinking caps on!

The Kingswood Salver is fast approaching and we need you to think of a theme. We need 5 photographs from five seperate photographers. It's best if they follow a theme and last year we chose reptiles. This year we need suggestions, so come on get thinking and give us your ideas.

Two Day Trips and a Studio Training Course

Fancy a trip to Marwell Zoological Park, Southampton, and an evening stroll along the front at Hill Head, Lee on Solent? You do! Fantastic just get in touch with Barrie or Rich, you could even let me know and I'll pass it on.
Entry to Marwell is £18 per adult. It's going to be an early start on either Saturday 14th or Sunday 15 August.

If you read the Blog you will have noticed that a few of us went to Snowshill Lavender Farm. Well they now have a field full of Sunflowers that are in full bloom. If your interested and want to get in for free then contact Barrie as he has four tickets for free entry (try saying that fast!), it normally costs £2.50 per adult, £1.50 for children.

Now for the once in a lifetime not to be missed opportunity (imagine a drum roll, big brass band intro, fireworks bursting into the sky.)

Some of you may remember Andy Milne. A while back he was a member of our club and Kingswood's then he moved up north. Well he now regularly runs Studio Tuition courses throughout the U.K. and is coming to Bristol to catch up with old friends and because he loves us so very much he's giving Reflex members the chance to do a three hour studio course, going from how to set up lights and how they work , the light shaping tools ,  metering from them and setting up a shot... working from a 1 light to 3 light set up...  and working with a subject. Running from Portraits to Artistic Nudes. The model can be male or female it depends on the preference of the group doing the course and Andy will supply the Lights,backgrounds, Location and other kit. All you would need to supply is your camera and a pen & paper if you want to take notes. Oh and don't forget your battery & memory card.

We've all seen the price of courses in the magazine's, so how much is this going to cost? £100? £150?  Nope its just £45 that's all.

If enough of us are interested he can run two courses both lasting three hours. The dates that have been suggested are somewhere between the 23rd to 30th August. With the timings probably 1200-1500 for the first course and 1530-1830 for the second session. The weekends would probably be the best bet as I know a lot of you work.
We will have to ask for a deposit of £20 and this will secure you a place. If you are definitely interested then please get in touch with me and I'll start the ball rolling.

If you want to see some of Andy's work it can be found at these three sites One Model Place , Purestorm or Model Mayhem.

The Berkeley Skirmish

This weekend, 24th 25th July, is the Berkeley Skirmish. Lots of people dressing up in heavy metal suits and trying to knock each others brains out with big pointy bits of metal. Its being held, as usual, at Berkeley Castle. Google Map Link) . Opening times for the skirmish are 11:00 - 17:00 hrs

Lots of things to do at the Skirmish including

• Knights jousting for the lady's favour.
• Demonstrations of mounted skill-at-arms.
• Two armies battling over disputed territory.
• The Lord's falconer will demonstrate the hunting skills of his lordship's hawks.
• The Master of Ordinance will show off the power of Berkeley's arsenal of guns through the ages.
• The children can experience games from the Middle Ages and you can all try your hand at archery.
• Wander through the soldiers' camps and chat with them about everything from weapons and armour to cooking or cannons.
• Visit the Artisans' Court where trades such as smithing, pottery and fletching will be displayed.
  You can talk to the artisans to gain greater insight into the skills required for these specialist crafts.
• And of course make time to visit the castle, all as part of your ticket price.

Mind you with the price they are asking for admission it had better be damn good. Prices are;
£14 for Adults, £7 Children (under 14 yrs), Free for Children under 5 yrs and £38 for a Family (2 adults & 2 children). Apparently you can get them cheaper if you book in advance HERE.

Also I want to thank Hanneke for doing such a great job adding events and other items to the Google Calender that we use to keep a list of everything we think might be worth a photo of! She does a much better job of it than me. You can find the Calender HERE.

Making Flickr Work for Us!

For those of you that don't know there has been discussion on better ways to use Flickr and we've come up with a few suggestions including changing the website to utilise the clubs pool of photographs. One of the things that is in the process of being created is a separate Flickr group, called "Reflex Camera Club - Admin". The aim of creating this group is so that we can invite photographs, from club members that have Flickr accounts, into it and thus make it easier for them to be used on the club's website. So far only a few of the club are members of this group and only those that are members will be able to choose photographs to be added into this group. The intent is not to invite all members into it but only have, at the most, all committee members in the group. That does NOT mean only a select few people will have photographs in the new group it just means that only a few people will be able to choose the pictures that go into it.

There is no intention at all to create an elitist group of members or to create anything that only a select few ever get to do. One of the aims is to use at least one picture from each club member.

Of course we can only use the pictures from members that are on Flickr. Hence the push to get people to join and upload pictures. By doing it this way we can have a tighter control of the images used on the front of the website. If you want to have your pictures on the new club website you will need a Flickr account as that is the only way that we will be using to add pictures to our website to start with.  Starting from Friday we will be inviting individual photographs into the new Flickr group. You will see a request for you to add a picture into the group. If you accept you are agreeing to us using it on the clubs website and for promotional purposes (not to make money but to increase the profile of the club). The copyright for any of the images we use will remain with you and if we want to use it for anything other than the website we will make every effort to contact you and check that it's O.K. to use it first.

We also have some other ways which we hope to use Flickr to promote the club and to get you more involved. I hope you will join us on Flickr. It really is easy to use and it lets you see and show more images than you otherwise would.

If you have any concerns or want to talk about this, joining Flickr or anything else, then let me know either by email or phone me on 0797 1283819.

This new group will also be used to hold copies of the club's competition winning photo's so that I can use them on the Blog, which for a photography club, is sadly lacking in photographs. If you have any ideas for the Blog then let me know them as well.

Mark

Lavender

Lavender, originally uploaded by Mark-Stone.

Last Saturday a few of us headed over to Snowshill Lavender Farm in Worcestershire. We got there around 8am only to find it didn't actually open until 10! So after a quick look along the road to see if there were any fields farther along that we could wander into Barrie spotted the farmer and we got his permission to climb over the gate and pay on the way out. As you can see it was a glorious day, blue sky, fluffy clouds and great sunshine. We were a bit late for the best light of the morning but it was still a great day and I think we all enjoyed ourselves. When we first went into the field it sounded just like being at one of the South African World Cup matches. There we so many Bee's buzzing around although you couldn't really see them. The other surprise was how there was virtually no smell from the lavender we were all expecting to be overwhelmed by the gorgeous perfume wafting up from the flowers but it wasn't to be.

I'm looking forward to our next outing on August 12th to Weston Super Mare. A reminder will go out closer to the date.

M.V. Jubilee

A reminder for those of you going on the boat trip. It's Thursday 8th and you need to meet up at 6pm for a 6.30pm departure. The boat is the M.V. Jubilee and is berthed at "The Canal Centre", Brassknocker Basin, Limpley Stoke, Bath (Google Map Link)

Directions (taken directly from their website) are;

By Car:
On the Bath / Warminster A36 turn at Viaduct Inn traffic lights towards Limpley Stoke on B3108. After 50 metres turn left into Visitor Centre car park.
By Bus:
Routes X4 and X5 from Bath, Frome, Trowbridge. Alight at Viaduct Inn and follow the signs to Visitor Centre.
The trip will take you to Avoncliff where it will stop for 35 mins and you can wander around to take pictures or just go into the pub. There's a fully licensed bar on board for those of you who don't wish to get off the boat and it also sells tea / coffee. If you want to see a bit more about the boat then you can visit the website.


Due to the timing of the boat trip, I can appreciate how difficult it will be for some people who will most probably be rushed due to leaving work and having to be there at 6pm, So there will be a selection of sandwiches available which Alison is also organising.


The cost of the trip will be £10.00 per person including sandwiches.  Below is a list of those that have confirmed.

If your on the list but can't go or if your not on the list but want to go then please let us know A.S.A.P.!


1.        Alison
2.        Steve Hallam
3.        Janet
4.        Kevin Spiers
5.        Carol Spiers
6.        Richard Price
7.        Vanessa Price
8.        Graham Grout
9.        Graham's wife
10.        Rosie Tomlinson
11.        Peter Tomlinson
12.        Barrie Tovey
13.        Pauline Tovey
14.        Ian Coombs
15.        David Waters
16.        Teresa Driscoll
17.        Arthur Belton
18.        Pat Belton
19.        Hanneke Ter Veen
20.        Simon (new member as of September - Hanneke's mate)
21.        Simon's wife
22.        Eddie House
23.        Roger (mate of Eddie)
24.        Jackie (Roger's wife)
25.        Roy Williams
26.        Joe & Wife 
Alec - possibly



If Ian falls in and you get a picture of it then there could be a pint in it for you! Sorry Ian I just can't help it.

I think that's it.  Have a great evening, take some pictures and send them to me so I can use them on the blog to embarrass people!

Just a small request.

Could I please ask that if you have something you wish to share with the club members via email that you send it to the club email address and then we will pass it out to everyone. I know this seems a petty little thing but it can get quite difficult to keep track of what some of you email in about when I haven't had the original mail and so have no idea at all what your talking about. It got quite embarrassing the other day when I had to figure out what a stick of celery and an egg whisk had to do with taking photo's! So if you could manage to do it that way from now on that would be great. You may also notice that you can no longer see all the email addresses that this has been sent to. That's something we should of been doing from the outset but just kept forgetting to do. So please don't think your being singled or picked on these emails are still going to everyone who wants to receive news from the club its just you wont be able to see who else it has been sent to any more.