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

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.

Reflex Open Competition Round 4 Results

The results for Round 4 of the ROC were announced at last Thursday’s meeting by guest judge Hillary Britland. I really have to thank Hillary for her superb judging with fantastic detailed comments for every single image that was entered.

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.

1st Place Print Section Bicep by Barrie Tovey	1st Place DPI Distant Thoughts by Sian Perry?
	Image has not been uploaded by me as I don’t have permission from the photographer to do so and they haven’t bothered to upload it to somewhere I can link to.
2nd Place Print Section Beth by Angie Nelson	2nd Place DPI Spring Nymph by Angie Nelson
3rd Place Print Section Petal Drops by Rich Price	3rd Place DPI Foel Tower by Mark Stone
Highly Commended Print Section Punk by Angie Nelson	Highly Commended DPI Eye Then by Roger Gowan
Highly Commended Print Section Fluffy by Richard Price	Highly Commended DPI Zebra Glass by Chris Mclean
Highly Commended Print Section Bugs Eye View by Nathan Williams	Highly Commended DPI Frosty Snipe by Rich Johnson
The Photographer has not bothered to supply me with a link or a digital version of this image.
	Highly Commended DPI Trees by Adrian Cook
	Highly Commended DPI In Song by Richard Price

Castle Combe Race Track

Great weather, great company and fantastic photo's just about sums up our trip yesterday to Castle Combe Race Track

Around 12 of us made the effort and were rewarded by a brilliant day. We met some very enthusiastic and very friendly petrol heads. Saw some amazing cars and took some amazing pictures.

My day started at 0500 when I got up and went down to see the Super Yacht Mogambo sailing out of Bristol Harbour along with Mike Garton.

Then we headed up to Castle Combe for the Great Western Sprint. When we arrived there were already lots of fellow club members wandering around and taking pictures.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Dan for volunteering to organise this months trip and booking the fabulous weather. If you want to see more pictures from our day out they should be appearing in our Flickr Group over the next few days.

Picture by Ian Combs (all rights reserved, please do not reproduce without written permission)

Club battle against A1

 

As the result was announced at last nights meeting I’m finally able to write about the club battle.

Around 12 of us made the trip down to Weston Super Mare to visit A1 Camera Club and enjoy their hospitality for the evening. Rich & Andro did their best to eat their own  bodyweight in cakes & biscuits and don’t you believe them if they try to say they didn’t. We were made to feel very welcome and our thanks go to everyone at A1 for making us feel at home.

Now on to the competition. Marks were given out of 20 and the first to be judged was the Digital Projected section.

A1 scored a very respectable 251 points and we managed to just beat them with 259! Out of the 30 DPI’s only two scored the maximum 20 points and those were by Ruth Doyle with “Cooling Off” and Mark Stone with “The Eye at Night”.

In the Print section A1 scored 249 and Reflex 262 which gave us an overall win with 521 points to A1’s 500. And there were three prints that scored the maximum 20 points. From A1 Andrew Thompson with “Still” and Reflex’s Richard Price with “Common Blue” & Adrian Cook with “Kilve Beach”

Robin Gregory

At tonight's meeting we have guest speaker Robin Gregory who will show and talk about 200 images and a few audio visual presentations. He will also show how he put together some of his images in Photoshop. The photograph is one of Robins and has been reproduced here with his permission.

Also please don’t forget that tonight is the final entry date for Round 4 of our Open Competition.

R.O.C Round 3 Results

 

First off I’d like to thank Roger Mallison for taking the time to cast his expert eye over and  judge all of the images.

Here are the winners from Round 3 of the Reflex Camera Club Open Competition.

(As usual images link to the image on Flickr (or the creators website) Names link to Flickr or website)

1st Place Digital Projected Image Bubbliness by Angi Nelson	1st Place Print Marie Anne by Ian Coombs
2nd Place Digital Projected Image Eye on the Ball by Richard Price	2nd Place Print Rhossili by Richard Price
3rd Place Digital Projected Image Alfie Reflection by Eddie House	3rd Place Print Very Moorish by Sian Perry
	Yet again hasn’t bothered to send in a digital version
Highly Commended Digital Projected Image Remembrance by Adrian Cook	Highly Commended Print The Beach by Ian Coombs
When he remembers how to switch his computer on I’ll have it…
Highly Commended Digital Projected Image Evening Light by Roy Williams

 

Congratulations to the winners and a huge thank you to everyone that took part.

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It certainly did contain nuts!

Last Thursday the lunatics took over the Asylum and we had Ian Coombs & Rich Price give us a presentation detailing the coach trip they and a few other coach members took to Dunkirk and around Fortress Europe.

It was a trip they will remember for quite some time and the rest of us will probably remember the presentation for a long time as well. They were introduced by Kevin Spiers who was in his best RAF uniform (although he was put on a charge for wearing the wrong tie). After that Rich took centre stage and talked us through the history of the retreat from Dunkirk and some of the harrowing stories from the places they had visited. All accompanied by pictures that he had taken plus some footage that had been taken way back when it actually happened.

After Rich’s bit we had a break and were treated to Bread and Ian’s Home made Plum Jam (so far I haven’t heard of anyone dying from food poisoning but you never know).

The second half of the evening saw Ian giving his talk very much in the style we had expected, some serious bits mixed in with a lot of his usual banter & joke’s. We learnt that his Grandfather had aided in the evacuation from Dunkirk and didn’t get home again for 4 years! The Flags that you see in the background of some of the pictures were from the ship his Grandfather served on.

It was a brilliant night with several club members that weren’t actually taking part in the presentation dressing up in 40’s clothes. If you want to view some of the pictures from the evening then you can take a look at Ian’s & Rich’s Flickr ‘streams by following the links earlier in this post and also at these sets taken by Andro Andrejevic and Mark Stone.

Warning: May contain Nuts!

 

I was sent a serious picture to put into the newsletter as an advert for this Thursday's meeting. Nah I don't think I want to use that. So you get one taken on by Andy Milne (he went on the trip as well).

Last year several club members went on a trip to Dunkirk. Despite our best efforts they made it back. This Thursday Rich Price & Ian Coombs of the Escape Committee present their tales of daring night time raids and how they escaped capture. Please arrive with Promptitude and be ready for, what is quite possibly, the strangest club night we will ever have.

It's also a themed night so if you want to use it as an excuse to dress up in clothes from the 1940's please do so. Just remember it's all being done as entertainment. So don't take anything seriously.

I had nightmares!

Last nights self portrait competition was a great success and I was really pleased that so many of you took part. What made it even better was that you all used a variety of techniques and styles to take your pictures.

I did worry that I was going to have nightmares thanks not just to Ruth’s picture but the mental image that was conjured up when it was put together with Myk’s bubble bath picture. Very disturbing and I’m going to need psychiatric help to recover.

Anyway my thanks to every single one of you that not only took part but turned up to vote and here are the winning pictures.

First Place: Ian Coombs

Second Place: Maurice Thompson

Third Place: Steve Hallam

Just for fun

Thursday is our just for fun Themed Digital Projected Image Competition. This time around the theme is Self Portrait’s. So come on don’t be shy. Set the camera to self timer, stand in front of a mirror, matter of fact who cares how you take it just take some self portraits and enter them for this competition. It’s judged on the night by everyone whose there. We hand out pens & paper for you to vote for your top 3 images. It’s not taken seriously and as long as the pictures you submit are on the theme, anything goes. You can submit up to 3 and either bring them in on a memory stick/card or, as I always say, our send them in via Dropbox which is our preferred method of submission. Size them as if for the R.O.C. (1400 pixels wide by 1050 pixels tall) and name them in the usual way ( 01_Picture Title_Your Name.jpg, 02_Picture Title_Your Name.jpg, 03_Picture Title_Your Name.jpg).

Thursday is also the last entry date for your Trio Entries. There has been a slight but very important change to the rules. Instead of 3 Digital or Print entries each person is now only allowed 2 entries. So that’s 2 Digital & 2 Print’s per person. This has been decided on because of the amount of entries we’ve had recently and the length of time it’s taken for the judge to get through them all. This applies not only to the Trio Round but to EVERY round of the R.O.C. from now on.

10x10

Now if your a member of the club you probably looked at the title of next weeks meeting and wondered just what the hell it meant. I suppose that we really should explain it to you although it really is very simple. All we want is for some of you to volunteer to show around 10 images that you’ve taken and give a little talk about them. Ideally the talk and showing the images should last about 10 minutes. Hence the title 10x10. If you don’t feel like talking then maybe you could just show us the pictures. Please don’t be shy about this, after all you put your images up on Flickr for people to admire so why not put them up on the screen at the club, sit back and enjoy the “ooh’s”, “ahh’s” and “Wow’s” as each image is shown!

You can either bring the pictures in on a memory stick or, preferably, send them in via Dropbox. Go on give it a go you know you want to.

David Burnett

This week see’s us enjoying a presentation by Photographer David Burnett entitled ‘Burnett’s Baroque’. "In Burnett's Baroque, David will take us on a tour of the baroque cities and architecture of Europe, beginning in Dresden and ending in Pottsdam (Berlin), with Prague, Venice, Verona and Rome in between. David appreciates any comments and feedback during his talk."

If your into architecture or just want to see what the buildings are like in various European cities then come along and enjoy the show.

January at Reflex

It’s all change for the New Year at Reflex. After around 15 years at the Langton Court Hotel we’ve had to move. Mainly because over the last two years our membership has grown from 15 to just under 60! That’s some achievement and shows that we must be doing something right for you all to keep coming back for more. If you don’t know where our new venue is then don’t worry it’s really easy to find and is only a few hundred yards down the road from our old meeting place. Here’s a map to show you. Car parking shouldn’t be an issue as we’ve been told we’ll be able to use the playground. You can see this previous Blog post for more details on the move.

Here’s what else is happening during January.

The 5th is a practical night and we’re just putting the finishing touches to what will be the first meeting at the School. Jan 12 we have David Burnett presenting a talk called “Burnett’s Baroque”. On the 19th we give you the chance to show some of your pictures and say a few words about them in our 10x10 evening. To take part just select 10 of your pictures and think of a few words to say about each of them. I’ll give you more details closer to the date. The last meeting in January (26th) is a just for fun themed, digital projected image, competition. The theme is Self Portrait’s. So you might want to take a trip to the Hairdresser’s, put on your best clothes and figure out just what you want to look like to the rest of the world. Again, more details nearer the time. The 26th is also the entry date for the Trio Round of the R.O.C..

There’s also the January instalment of our 12 months of Reflex. This month it’s being organised by Angi Nelson and it’s going to be fantastic. So keep your eye’s peeled for more information over the next few weeks.

Frogs, Snakes & Light Painting

We had a bit of a gap in our programme as our scheduled speaker had to cancel. Luckily for us club members Angi Nelson & Myk Garton offered to fill it for us. So instead of having to sit quietly and listen & look at someone else’s images we had a practical night.

Now practical nights can be a bit of a hit or miss affair. Sometimes we don’t get many people attending. Other times we get nearly every club member turn up. This Thursday was definitely one of  those times that nearly everyone turned up! Angi supplied us with various Frogs, Snakes & Reptiles plus a load of props & studio lights whilst Myk took charge of the Light Painting side of things.

After setting up the tables, props & animals Angi and her daughter with the aid of Richard Price gave those that wanted to stay inside and take images of the animals advice and help with the settings on their camera’s if they wanted or needed it.

Whilst all that was happening Myk Garton & Kevin Spiers took a group of members to the park across the road so they could create some Light Painting Images.

If your interested in seeing more images created on Thursday night then you can go to our Flickr Group where they are gradually being added by club members.

Frog Image copyright Michelle Lou. Light Painting Image copyright AJA Photography

Contrasting views

If you were at last nights talk by Andy Beel you may of just noticed a smile appear on my face when just after he started talking he made a massive sweeping statement that nearly made me shout “YES”!.

“With digital it’s not just what you do in the camera.

What you do with the file afterwards is just as, if not more important!”

 

I should imagine that quite a few of you that used to shoot film probably turned off at that point and got all nostalgic about how digital isn’t really photography and there isn’t any skill to it anymore. I’m sorry I just don’t agree with you. Well kind of. Digital photography is a totally different skill set to film photography. But then again it all depends on how you take your pictures. If you shoot JPG and only do a little or no editing on the computer afterwards then you’ll find that it’s more like traditional film photography where you need to get as much, if not all of it right in the camera. Whereas if you shoot in raw then I believe you should be aiming to purposely shoot for a fairly flat image that retains as much detail across the whole of the picture from the darkest shadow to the whitest white. Because your going to edit it on your computer. You are going to choose where the brightest highlights and the deepest, darkest blacks are going to be. Everything in that image is yours to do with as you will. Which is obviously a totally different way of seeing photography. Which is better? I can’t answer that but I know which is best for me. If you haven’t figured out which you prefer yet then just give both ways a go. Experiment & see just how long it takes you to get bored sat in front of the computer. If it’s only a few minutes then maybe you need to re evaluate the way you take your images and go back to shooting JPG. There’s no shame in that. It’s only stuck up self righteous buffoons (there’s a good word I haven’t seen used in ages) that will tell you otherwise.

 

Oh yeah I was talking about Andy wasn’t I. Sorry I get distracted easi………

 

Andy talked quite a bit about curves and custom curves so I thought I would give you a couple of links. That way if you wanted to you could have a bit of a read about them. If you want to discover more about Custom Curves or just find out some background on Curves you can follow either of those links. Yes they both use Lightroom to demonstrate it but you can replicate it in virtually any piece of editing software that has curves.

Everything was going really well, until the splash….

We started the day at Woodchester Mansion which is an unfinished Gothic style mansion. A great place inside and some wonderful grounds to walk around and take pictures. The front of the mansion is mostly complete but unfortunately they seemed to think that the addition of a huge, white, 30 foot long marquee outside the entrance would be a good idea. That kind of ruined the chances of getting any good shots of the house as the back was covered in scaffolding and you could see the marquee from the side of the house as well. Cloning things out from between tree branches isn’t my idea of fun so I quickly dismissed even taking a shot.

I had a nice long walk around the Orange route with Rich as we were going to find the boathouse and see if we could get a decent shot or two of it. As we were walking down from the house we bumped into Christine and found that her day wasn’t going to well. She’d removed the SD card from her camera the night before for some reason and had forgotten to replace it. So no pictures for her and a totally wasted trip out. As we continued on the Orange route we kind of missed a turn when a couple of cows decided to object to our presence. Which led to us taking a two mile round trip around a couple of lakes instead of only having to walk about 500 yards from the house to the boathouse! Next time I’m definitely bringing a jar of mustard to threaten the cows with.

When we got back to the mansion to our dismay the tea room had already shut and we were forced to endure a dry wait for the minibus to take us back up to the car park. The less said about that journey the better if only for the fact I want to forget that at one point the van was leaning over at 45 degrees when the driver had to reverse and went up on the bank. When we got up to the car park we found Myk & Angi waiting for us. It seemed that everyone else had decided to call it a day and gone home. We were also treated to a great display from the local Glider club as the flight path in to land went directly above the car park.

We all headed, literally across the road to the car park at Coaley Peak, which is a popular hang gliding spot. After capturing a few shots of the sunset we moved up to a more secluded part of the picnic area to do a little bit of light painting. That went really well but it seems we won’t be buying our wire wool at B&Q again as it lasted all of about 10 seconds once it was lit. After a little bit of discussion we decided to head through Dursley, via a fantastic fish & chip shop, to Purton Hulks. Where the plan was to go and do some light painting down amongst the decaying hulls of the boats. We arrived and promptly set off down the towpath to find a suitable spot. Stopping at one of the Hulks we set up and had a bit of fun with lasers, sparklers and various kid’s toys! If you’ve had a go at light painting before you know what I mean. We moved on again to another hulk and created some images  there. Then we had a great idea. Lets go back to the car park and spin some orbs & wool spin off the bridge over the canal! Great, what could possibly go wrong? So we start to set up and Angi decides to go down the tow path a little and try a different angle towards the bridge. She spots some steps going down to what, in the moonlight, looks like a solid piece of concrete. Unfortunately it was just algae covered water! Splash in she went, camera, tripod and mobile phone. Right up to her neck! Now on the bridge Rich was heard to say, bloody hell Angi you’ve scared the birds and spoilt the reflections! Myk jokingly said “It’s only Angie falling in”. Then we heard a HELP! And it was “Oh shit she has!”. Rich & Myk helped her out and I got my camera (I can’t see anything wrong with my priorities). As you can see from the picture she tried to take half the canal home in her shoe.

Nervous yet?

If you’ve not been with the club for long then this coming Thursday will probably be a new experience for you. We had sixty nine digital images entered for Round 1 of the competition. That’s the most we’ve ever had. Plus we also had about twenty five prints submitted. Twenty three of you decided to enter the digital part of the competition. I believe I’m right in saying that’s more than the clubs total membership was 3 - 4 years ago!

Photo by Louise Iddon.
entered in
Round 1 last year.

If this is your first time entering the R.O.C. (Reflex Open Competition) then let me give you a bit of advice for when your sat there listening to the judge on Thursday.

Don’t take anything he says personally. 

He’s not saying your a bad person or that you suck at photography. He’s giving his opinion on the photograph in front of him. Most of them give good advice and suggestions. Listen to what they say. Not just about your images. But for all the photographs. If their a good judge you’ll get consistent and helpful advice. You might not agree with what they say, well actually it’s guaranteed that you won’t agree with everything they say, but try to listen impartially to the comments. It can be really hard to take criticism, even if it is constructive, but it can give you some amazing insights into how you perceive your own, and other peoples,  photograph's.

If you’ve not entered then my advice to you is to sit where you can see the faces of those that have. You’ll probably get to see everything from happy smiling faces to looks of incredulous amazement that anyone would think their image is anything less than perfect.

No matter if you’ve entered or not you should turn up, sit down and enjoy the images. You can choose to ignore everything the judge says or hang on their every word. It’s up to you. Just don’t let anything that’s said put you off entering in the future.  After all it’s your photograph and as long as you like it, nothing else matters.

Open your eyes

Last nights meeting was superb. Not only did we get to see some fantastic photography by Simon Caplan but there was literally “no room at the inn!”.

Simon got the evening off to a great start by explaining just what he hopes to achieve when he takes a photograph but instead of trying to make it sound all arty and full of technobabble he did it in an easy to follow and uncomplicated way. The words were punctuated by some wonderful images which when they appeared on the screen made you stop, look and then think “hang on a minute. I’ve seen that a million times! Why didn’t I take that photograph?”. His images are full of the little details, symmetry and colours that hundreds of people will walk past every single day and not even notice. It really does make you wonder how you could be so blind, How you’ve never really looked at your surroundings.

I’ve actually had emails from a few club members saying how much they enjoyed the evening. That’s never happened before, so I can say if you get the chance, take a look at his work and listen to what he has to say.

Just a quick note about the room. We are aware of the problems we are having at the moment and are exploring our options.

Simon Caplan

Out of the Blue © Simon Caplan

This weeks guest speaker is Simon Caplan with a presentation called “The Extraordinary Ordinary” how photography can discover hidden beauty in the urban envirionment. Simons recently had an exhibition at the YHA in Bristol’s Harbourside area and I’ve been on a few walks around the Harbourside with him and other Bristol Flickr Group members. It’ll be an evening of great photography and I can promise you’ll have walked past where he’s taken several of his photographs and you won’t have even seen what he’s taken a picture of.