Social and prize giving this Thursday

 Last weeks super fun practical meeting resulted around 40+ of us descending on the streets of the St Annes area in a bid to get photographs to fit the 5 themes we were left by Ruth. The local people were seriously disturbed by us geeky camera carrying brigade and I hear there were a few funny remarks made. Although a few locals were game to helping us out as you will see in the images in a couple of weeks, even the wildlife and teddy bears came out to play and we were treat to a nice sunset as well. I cant wait to see the results. Many thanks to Julie Coombs for helping to arrange the photo rally.

 We have one sneak peek image, taken on the same evening, Myk must have taken an extra card along I think.

This week we have yet another evening of fun scheduelled, but not at the school as per usual, this time we are meeting at the Langton court pub for a night of skittles and prize giving. There will be food provided to give you that extra little bit of energy to play hard at skittles.

Summer is here - image below by Alison Davies

I hope you have all had a chance to get and about in this gorgeous weather with your cameras. I see Andro and Myk certainly managed to capture a lovely sunset at Clevedon and another group of us were out photographing in the beautiful evening light yesterday in south Gloucestershire.  So dont think you have to go out on your own, if you want to team up with others from the group then do shout up at the meetings, or on the Flickr or facebook pages.

Image below by Andro

Results for the John Hankin and Stan Scantlebury shields

This week we had a guest  judge from the Yate and Sodbury club along, to judge entries for the John Hankin shield (prints) and Stan scantlebury shield ( projected image). Members were asked to enter two of their best entries from this last years open competitions to be considered in each section.
 There were lots of lovely varied images and I am sure our judge had a hard time choosing his favourites.

If the photographer has a Flickr Account their name links to it. The picture also links to that picture on Flickr (or wherever they have it online) No link or picture means they haven’t put it online or haven’t let me know where I can find it to link to.

                                                        John Hankin shield (prints)                                      
                                                                 1st Place                                                                                 
                                               Extravagant lifestyle by Mark O Grady 

  

                                                                 2nd Place
                                                           Punk by Angi Nelson

3rd place

Escaping the dentists chair by Mark O Grady

Highly commended

Bicep by Barrie Tovey

                                


                                               Stan Scantlebury shield (projected image)
                                                                            1st place
                                                     Valentines bridge by Angi Nelson
                                                                              

2nd Place

Frosty Snipe by Richard Johnson

3rd Place

Alfi reflection by Eddie House

Highly commended

Jaws by Roy Williams

Dont forget to bring your camera and a spare memory card for this weeks photo marathon fun. Arrive early if you can and dress for the weather as we will be outdoors.

Oh and a word of advice for anyone planning to get married - remember your glasses :)

and be careful nobody videos you on your wedding night :)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/kevs/7229546874/

AGM, Tom Sage and practical session

Lots of things going on with Reflex at the moment, many of which were summed up in last weeks annual general meeting. It looks like the club committee and members have been hard at work behind the scenes with planning and organising the future of the club. If you didnt make it to the meeting (like me - slapped wrists) then please take the time to read our newsletter which outlines a few changes that we all have to look forward to. As a result of feedback from members there are all sorts of new ideas being implemented, offering us a great deal of variety over the year and even more opportunities to get stuck in and participate rather than just sitting in chairs.

This week we are back to our normal meeting day of Thursday and we are expecting a presentation by Tom Sage, a photographer who worked with the Press association on Fleet street for 15 years and then moved on to work with hot air balloons. It should be interesting to hear his experiences of press photography.

We have a little advance info regarding the meeting in two weeks time on May 24th, this will be our last practical session of the season, now at the moment its all top secret and all Ive been told is that we need to bring our cameras and an empty memory card. We will be venturing outside the walls of the school, so you softie southerners will likely need big furry boots, winter coats, hats, gloves scarves ( ha - waiting for the retaliative abuse ). Oh and apparently it would help if we could all be at the club for 7pm that evening, ready to brave the weather by 7:15.

Congratulations to Mark O Grady who has had a print accepted in the London Salon exhibition on his first ever entry, its great to see our members doing well.
Mark o Gradys flickr

Aperture – part 2: It’s all about depth of field

So you’ve promised to only use aperture priority and have been practicing day and night? J Then you’ll have noticed that your depth of field is also affected by something other than the size of the opening on your camera. Have you guessed it?

Distance from subject

Your distance from your subject also has a dramatic effect on the depth of field – the closer you are to your subject, the shallower the depth of field. Why? Well it’s all about converging angles – translation – you don’t need to worry, although if you want to find out more it’s just a google away.
So let’s add that to the rule we established in the last post:

The smaller the number and the closer you are to the subject,
the shorter the depth of field.

 

and of course the reverse is true:

The larger the number and the further you are from the subject,
the longer the depth of field.

Aperture numbers

You’ll remember from the last post that setting the aperture involves choosing a number, such as 5.6 or 8. These numbers are know as f-stops and one ‘stop’ will increase / decrease the amount of light entering the camera by 2 or ½ respectively; which will also affect the shutter speed you can achieve. We’re not going to go into the theory right now, but just remember that when we say ‘f-stop’ or show a number such as f5.6, we’re referring to the aperture number.

But why does it matter?

I can hear you screaming ‘but why does it matter?’ at this point, so let’s look at some real world examples.

When shooting landscapes, you generally want lots / all the scene in focus, so pick a high number for your aperture – anything from f8 – f16.


With macro, you want very little in focus to blur the background and concentrate on the details. Get close to your subject and use a low aperture, from f1.4 – f4.


For portraiture, you’re generally looking at the middle of the scale. If you’re in the studio with a backdrop, the ‘magic’ f-stop is f8 to get all your subject in focus. If you’re outdoors, put your subject away from the background and shoot in the f5.6 range to get the subject in focus and the background blurred. And of course, getting closer to your subject will shorten that depth of field even more.

Get to it!

 

So there you have it – switch to aperture priority and start practicing. There’s no better way to understand aperture than seeing the results!


Provided by Danny T Photography.

Roy who?

After 20 years of being our competition secretary we finally realised that Roy’s pictures always won so we’ve given him the boot. Well ok maybe not but I had to look long and hard to find a picture that summed up the skill and mastery he has over his camera.

It’s been a great 20 years mate and I’m sure you’d still do a much better job than that long haired hippy bloke whose taking over from you!

Everyone in the club want’s me to pass on our thanks for all the effort (I did try not to laugh when I wrote that bit) you’ve put in over the years but at least this gives you more time to concentrate on your heckling from the back of the room.

Those of you hoping to read about our AGM will have to wait until the newsletter goes out later today or tomorrow to find out about all our plans for the coming season.