Dropbox

If you keep seeing me mention Dropbox and are wondering just what it is then now's your chance to find out. Dropbox is quite simply one of the most useful bits of free software that the club uses. It makes the job of collecting pictures & files from all of you really easy. Here's a step by step guide on how to get it set up.

• use this link to visit the Dropbox website, download their software and register on the website. If it's been a while since you installed their software then go and download & install it again, they've released a few new versions lately that fix a few bugs.
• Install their software. Go on it doesn't hurt. Once installed you should see a Dropbox folder on your desktop
• Email me to let me know you've installed it. Please make sure you let me know the email address you used to sign up to their website.
• You'll get an email asking you to join a "Shared Folder". The folder will be called something like "Reflex Entries Your Name". Please accept the invite.
• Once you've accepted the invite you should see the shared folder INSIDE of your Dropbox folder (the Dropbox folder is on your desktop if you didn't change it's location when you installed the software)
• That's the hard part done. See I told you it was pretty painless!
• From now on whenever you want to send pictures or files into the club all you need to do is put them inside the SHARED FOLDER.
• When you want to send in pictures just put them inside the shared folder. You can also create more folders inside the shared folder if you need to.
• If your sending in pictures just leave your PC switched on for a few minutes so that it has a chance to upload the files. (If the pictures are sized for our competitions then it will only take a few seconds for them to upload. Larger files will, obviously, take longer to upload)
• That's it. You don't have to worry about Dropbox anymore it should all run smoothly and without you needing to do anything else.
• Another useful thing is that by having Dropbox installed if the club needs to send you a picture or file it will also work that way as well.

Deliberately mess it up.

If you came along to last nights meeting you would of been sat there bored, listening to me tell you how to edit your photographs, but wait a minute. I didn’t tell you how to do it. I showed you how I would edit three of my pictures and hopefully started you thinking what you could do to your own work to make it stand out a little.  I didn’t want any of you going away from last nights meeting thinking you had to do exactly what I said. I desperately wanted you NOT to do that and I really hope I succeeded.

I honestly think that everyone should take the pictures they want and edit them (or not) however they want to. They are after all your pictures. But I also think that if you do want to process your pictures you should try and make them the best they could be. If no one else likes what you’ve done to a picture, who cares! As long as your happy with it that’s what counts. But you have to admit it’s nice when someone tells you they like what you’ve created.

You may take something, look at it on the back of the camera and think “well that’s crap”, but I hope that the last two weeks have shown you that no matter how bad it looks on the camera screen it can be turned into a good picture with just a little bit of work. Now that’s not to say that you shouldn’t try and take the best photograph possible and get as much as possible right in camera, but if something goes wrong or you forget to change a setting because your in a hurry then its not the end of the world.

If I can create the picture on the right from the total mess on the left there’s no reason you can’t either! I guess what I’m trying to get you to understand is don’t be afraid to try doing something different when your editing your pictures. See what you can get out of the ones you think are beyond hope. You never know what you’ll get.

About time…

I’ve been a bit lax in updating the Blog the past few weeks and I’m sorry about that although it’s mainly been due to all the behind the scene’s stuff that’s going on with the club at the moment. We’ve got the 13 weeks of Summer course that we’re running. I’m trying out a new way of doing the newsletter which does involve more effort in putting it together, but the end result is so much easier to read and pleasing to the eye. Plus there are one or two other things that I won’t bore you with.

Anyway we’re up to week 5 of our 13 Weeks of Summer course. This week you get to find out all about the mysterious but amazingly simple Histogram. Simple? Yes once it’s explained and you realise that it really is that easy to understand you’ll never be confused by it again. We also get stuck into the various Metering modes and talk about exposure. No put your dirty minds back away it’s not that kind of exposure. If your lucky you’ll get to see us turn a picture of a glass of milk into a picture of orange juice right before your very eyes, with just the click of one button! Yes you guessed it. White Balance rears it’s ugly head and we’ll show you how to tame it once and for all.

You will need to bring your camera’s this week as the practical session returns after its week of rest and recuperation.

13 Weeks of Summer, Week 3

Well weeks 1 & 2 have gone and were up to week 3 of our 13 Weeks of Summer. This Thursday you can look forward to an evening of choices. Which Lens to choose, which focusing point to choose, which drink should you buy from the bar! ah well no not that one. It may seem like it’s only for those with dSLR’s but it’s not. If you use a point and shoot you need to make informed decisions. Do you walk closer to your subject or just zoom in. It does make a difference to your photograph, how? Well come along on Thursday and discover the ancient art of Zen and Lens Compression as told by Chairman Indiana Spiers.

The only other thing to say is WHERE IS YOUR HOMEWORK????? Forgot it again did you? Well if your not careful it’ll be detention for you. Please don’t forget to take a picture. We don’t care what it’s of. What size it is. Or any of the other usual things we ask you to do with it before you send it in. We’ll OK there is just one thing we want you to do and that’s put your name in the filename. Then just either Dropbox it, email it, or bring it in. We will need this picture for one of the coming weeks. So please take it and let us have it.

Practical Night

 

Some interesting talks last night on Lightroom, personal workflow and F stops. We even learnt a new highly technical phrase to use when talking about the built in Light meter on our camera’s; The pointy slidey thing. I for one will be using it as often as possible.

Thanks to Rich Price, Dan Thomas and Kev Spiers for giving the talks. Also thank you to Arthur Belton and Ian Coombs for giving the picture mounting demo’s.

If you have something interesting to say on any aspect of photography or want to demonstrate a technique you like then get in touch. We’re always looking out for people to do this kind of thing on practical night’s. Or if you have something you would like to see explained or want to practice a technique. Let us know.

Practical Night

Last night was our second practical night of the year. We had demonstrations on editing
using various different pieces of software, Macro Photography, mount board cutting and how
the different apertures affect the depth of field and we also tackled a lot of question's. Although how to add
zombies to a graveyard photo was probably the most original one of the night. It was a great evening
and everyone who attended said they had learned something new. Which was exactly what we
hoped would happen.

The feedback we had was great and we’re already planning the next practical night in February.

Cutting mount board

What's new

Unless someone just poked your eyes out you will notice that over on the left of your screen is a new addition to the Blog. We now have a Facebook page. If you scroll down a little bit more you will also notice that there is a section called "You might like....". What someone has dug your eyes out with a spoon! At least that explains why no one has commented on it yet. Anyway, inside that section you will find links to a whole page dedicated to the various Exhibitions & Salon's around the country, listed in month order. Our very own Dominique compiled it for you all so a big thank you goes out to her for doing such a fantastic job. Also there's a link for "Where to go and What to do!" that page is still being worked on but all the information that is being used was collated by Hanneke. I've been a bit slow to put up the information but I am doing it slowly.

Anyway tonight's the practical night so bring along your camera's, questions, laptops and anything else you want to use or learn about. We're going to try our best to impart as much knowledge as possible to you all. So please do make sure you come along. If you think tonight would be a waste of time for you then come along, help out and share some wisdom with those of us less fortunate one's.

I know what you did last summer!

This week its bring your summer photo's in and show us just what you got upto during the break. (See what I did with the title clever wasn't it!) Don't be shy pick out the ones that show your holiday, day at the park, whatever you got up to. Well maybe not everything. Just the legal and non perverted stuff! It might seem scary to have your shots on show to everyone but it's great fun and you'll not only enjoy yourself. You'll probably get some constructive comments that could make you think about how you take pictures. I know I have!

Also don't forget to bring in your Print entries for the First Round of the Open Competition. The rules and some walk throughs on how to resize your pictures have been posted on the Website and Blog. I've also sent out an email with them in. If your going to enter Digital Files for the Projected Image section then please email them in NO LATER THAN midday on Friday See if you use email you can get an extra day to prepare them. Of course you can bring your digital files in on a memory stick and hand them in on the night but the preferred method of entry is by email. So please, if at all possible, email them in. Also try to remember that they should be named Similar to the following examples

01_My Title_Fred Bloggs.jpg
02_My Other Title_Fred Bloggs.jpg
03_My Last Title_Fred Bloggs.jpg

My pictures shrunk in the wash!

If your on the clubs mailing list you already know that we have a couple of PDF's doing the rounds on how to resize your pictures so they can be entered into the club competitions. I'm basically just going to bore the pants off you now by repeating myself. We've got, not one, not two but THREE! (see surprised you there didn't I) tutorials on the website dealing with resizing your pictures. Two of them you already know about, the one's for Lightroom and Photoshop. The third was created by our very own Steve Hallam (there now he gets the blame if any of it is wrong) and shares the arcane art of resizing in Paint.net. If you've never heard of it then you should check it out. It's totally free and very good. The have a great community on their forums with lots of people regularly posting help and advice to anyone using the software. If you need a good piece of editing software for your photo's the best free option, if your using a windows pc, is probably going to be Paint.net.

To find the tutorials on resizing visit our website and goto the links page. Find the Reflex member downloads part and all of them are listed there. At the moment you only have those three tutorials and the competition rules available but we are planning on adding more soon. So if you want to know how to do something in Photo Editing Software or what settings you should be using to take a particular shot. Basically anything photo related. Get in touch!