6 Weeks of Summer

We wish we had six weeks of summer weather but hey ho. Instead we entitle our summer tuition course this to make you feel like you've had one!

Well Thursday saw the tuition draw to a close and what a great 6 weeks it was. Thanks to everyone who attended the turn out was great (30 - 40 each week). We covered everything from Exposure basics through lens techniques to histograms and RAW vs JPG (I won't be doing that again).

It was really enjoyable and I received some great feedback from members on the tuition and content. We hope you all enjoyed it and possibly learned something if only one little nugget it would be worth it.

Photo marathon Results

Hi Julie sent me a load of information for the results of the Photo marathon. The important bits are reproduced below along with a short piece written by her. She also sent me a table that she’d obviously spent a while working on that showed everyone's results all nice and neat. Trouble is the way that Blogger & the software we use to write the Blog posts works I can’t put the table up without spending a helluva long time transposing it by hand. So you probably won’t get to see that. Anyway here’s what Julie had to say..

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Good afternoon all, I hope you enjoyed looking through the photos last night it certainly was interesting to see how creative you all are when put under pressure like that.

I know I mentioned how close the voting was but I thought you might like to see the individual results you scored for each category. These are in the grid below and the overall winners are shown below in a 1^st 2^nd 3^rd ranking for each category. Once again congratulations to everyone who got some points, you all rose to the challenge admirably.

(as I said in the opening part of this post I’m afraid I can’t post the nice neat table she worked on for you all to see your individual scores)

Category: Street Sign

1^st Mark O’Grady (5 points)

2^nd Sally Coombs & Mark Stone (4 points)

3^rd Debbie Duncombe, Eddie House & Hanneke Ter Veen (3 points)

Category: Door

1^st Alison Davies (6 points)

2^nd Eddie House (5 points)

3^rd Hanneke Ter Veen & Mark O’Grady (4 points)

Category: Shadow

1^st Mark O’Grady (10 points)

2^nd Richard Price (7 points)

3^rd Ian Coombs (6 points)

Category: Gate

1^st Joe Scudamore (6 points)

2^nd Simon Xu (5 points)

3^rd Debbie Duncombe & Mark Stone (4 points)

Category: Commercial Vehicle

1^st Hanneke Ter Veen (7 points)

2^nd Mark O’Grady (5 points)

3^rd Maurice Iles (4 points)

Category: Open

1^st Mark O’Grady (18 points)

2^nd Ian Coombs & Maurice Thompson (3 points)

3^rd Steve Hallam , Theresa Driscoll & Wendy O’Brien (2 points)

Overall Winner

1^st Mark O’Grady (21 points for his Open Category entry)

2^nd Alison Davies (6 points for her Door Category entry)

3^rd Mark O’Grady (5 points for his Shadow Category entry)

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

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.

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

Outside Exhibitions & Competitions

Today I have a post from long time Reflex member Barrie Tovey. Barrie has taken the time to explain just why it is that he enjoys entering Photographic Exhibitions & Salons.

The reason that I like to enter external Competitions & Salons is that I like the thought that my images are seen by a wider audience.

I get a real buzz from getting an image accepted, because of the number of photographers that enter mean that there can be 100’s if not 1000’s of images submitted, so to get one of mine in must mean that the judge or judges think that it’s worthy. There is normally a cost for entering and I know that there is no monetary gain. All you gain is pride and the knowledge that you’ve created a great image.

So if you want to have a go at putting your images in to an Outside Exhibition or Competition, Print or Digital please talk to me. I’m happy to help you select your entries (if you want me to), though I can’t guarantee that it will get in. Also if you enter as a group you can save on postage by sending all the prints off in the same case.

The “Cotswold Mono” is coming up fast so if your keen to give it a go then please let me know.

I’ve just had 2 images accepted into the Basingstoke Exhibition, one which gained a Commended placing. So I’m pretty pleased at the moment.

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.

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.

Thursday’s Meeting

Instead of the advertised speaker we have Martin Edwards who will be presenting a talk called “Film Photography in the Digital Age' and is about the resurgence in interest in analogue techniques now that digital photography is mainstream. He will also be bringing some of the camera’s he uses to take his images. If you’d like to visit his website and see some of his work then you can go here.

 

 

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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