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

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.

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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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.

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.

Practical Night

The practical night last night seemed to be a success. After splitting into two groups (outdoor and indoor) we set about demonstrating some light painting techniques. Light painting has been done for many years even before the digital age but it is now being taken to the next level with some fantastic images being created.Last night was about showing what fun it can be and how it can add a whole new dimension to taking pictures. Not only did members get a privileged glimpse at some of the tools used to create shapes such as orbs, domes, double domes and other effects, but also participate in creating images.Whether you were outside spinning wire wool or indoors making a man-o-fire, everyone seemed to enjoy it.

 

The priceless thing for me was after spinning the first orb, the first time the image appears on the back of the camera and you hear a “Wow” from nearly everyone. Great.

This was written by Richard Price but he had a bit of trouble posting it.
I’d like to add a great big thank you to Richard Price, Kevin Spiers, Myk Garton and everyone else who helped set this fantastic evening up. I was gutted to miss it but I’m really glad it was such a success. If I missed you off the names that helped I’m sorry and if you really want me to add you to it just let me know.

R.O.C. Round 1 Results

There were some fantastic images entered for Round 1 of our Open Competition. Thanks to everyone that entered and a special thank you to Matt Roach for his excellent judging and taking the time to go through all the entries & giving good constructive comments on each and every one. Especially as there were so many of them. If you want to see some of Matt’s photography then you can visit his Flickr ‘stream by going here.

All the winners are shown below. As usual clicking on the pictures should take you to that picture on the persons Flickr ‘stream. If they don’t have a Flickr account then it takes you to that picture on the clubs Flickr ‘stream. Clicking on their name will either take you to their Flickr ‘stream or their website, if they have one.

1st Place Print: Fairy Fireworks by Rich Price	1st Place DPI: A Couple of Couples by Mark Stone
2nd Place Print: Heading Home by Ruth Doyle	2nd Place DPI: Carnival Joy by Simon Xu
3rd Place Print: Brave heart by Ian Coombs	3rd Place DPI: Flowers by Adrian Cook
Highly Commended Print: Waterfall by Antony Beezer	Highly Commended DPI: Relaxing in the Sun by David Jones
Highly Commended Print: Sharing by Julie Coombs	Highly Commended DPI: Shelter from the Rain by David Jones
Highly Commended Print: I only have eyes for you by Theresa Driscoll	Highly Commended DPI: Smith & Son by Eddie House
Highly Commended Print: Going Alone by Nathan Williams	Highly Commended DPI: Occupation by Ian Coombs
Unfortunately I do not currently have a digital version of the image.
Highly Commended Print: Sit and Stay by Alison Davies

 

 

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks to everyone that took part.

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.

Mpix Results

I’m pleased to say Barrie Tovey & Ian Coombs both had acceptances into the Mpix Competition this year. Barrie had two pictures accepted, Red Kite Stoop and Torso. Whilst Ian had one acceptance called “Well I Like It”. But it meant he’s managed a life long ambition of having a rat picture actually get into an exhibition.

 

Red Kite Stoop, Barrie Tovey	Well I Like It, Ian Coombs
Torso, Barrie Tovey

Debbie Young

Last night we had a great talk by Debbie Young. Despite some technical problems (the laptop is currently in the middle of the road on fire after being doused in petrol!) it went well. It was great to see some of the equipment she used in her underwater photography and I know quite a few of you enjoyed looking at her photographs especially the street photography.

I’d just like to take this opportunity to thank Debbie for coming along and giving us a great presentation.

Welcome to Reflex

The new season is just about to start. This Thursday the 1st September is the start of the new club season for us. Normally we would of had a break during the summer. But this year we gave all of our members the chance to take part in our 13 Weeks of Summer photography course. Now that course is over and we’re gearing up for a fantastic season of Guest Speakers, practical nights, competitions and photography. So if you’ve been thinking of joining a photography club or just want to find somewhere that can give you help & advice from friendly people who aren’t out to sale you anything come along to one of our Thursday night meetings. You’ll be made to feel welcome and we don’t care what camera you use or your photographic abilities. The only thing we insist is that you enjoy taking photographs.

If you want to find out more then visit our website. Where you can find out more information.

12 Months with Reflex

 

If you were there at last weeks meeting not only did you get a surprise when you walked through the door into the room you would of heard Kevin talk about something we would love to get you involved in. That something is what we’re going to call 12 Months with Reflex.

The plan is to arrange a day out taking photographs once a month with club members. Why are we making a bit of a fuss about it? Because we want you to get involved. Not just by coming along to take pictures but by helping to organise the trips. We would like 12 of you to take one step forward and volunteer to organise one of the trips each month. It’s not difficult really. All you have to do is say where you want to go and take photographs. Easy isn’t it! Pick a month and a date, pick a location then just tell everyone that’s where and when we’re going. The we’re not looking for highly organised coach trips or anything like that. Just somewhere that you can wander around and take pictures.

If you need inspiration you can take a look at the Bristol Flickr Walk Group to see some of the photographs that have been taken when a group of photographers from the Bristol Area, who are all on Flickr, have got together and wandered around taking pictures. Or you can look at this thread in our Flickr Group that lists lots of places you could use as your location.

If you feel up to the challenge then let Mark or Kevin know on a Thursday night or you can email Mark at the usual club address.

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.

Oh I do like to be beside the sea side

On Saturday an intrepid bunch of adventurers, well six of us, went to Weston Super Mare for a stroll along the sea front and to take pictures. It was a camera club outing but it seemed that most of the club decided it wasn’t for them. Which was a shame because the sun was out and the only bad thing was the wind. Although that created a few good photo opportunities and I’m still annoyed that when the wave broke over the sea wall none of us had our camera’s pointed at the cyclist that got soaked.
We all met at the Pier for six o’clock (at least those of us that could tell the time did, mentioning no names, Kevin.) and decided to go along it and see what we could find. After dodging a van and a train, whilst walking along the pier, we got to the far end and wondered if we were going to get blown off it was so windy. We went inside for a bit and then went for some fish & chips. Barrie ordered his food, got a coffee and walked straight past the till only for the girl to come running after him as he hadn’t paid for any of it!
After the meal we strolled along the seafront. Nearly making it to the old Knightstone pier. If you want to know why we didn’t go all the way to the old pier keep an eye on the pictures in the Flickr group pool and you’ll see that we would have had to time it just right to get past a particularly wet section of the footpath. The waves were constantly breaking over the sea wall at one of the narrowest points of the pathway and we all chickened out. Because of the wind we decided to abandon our plans for a bit of Beach light painting and head home.

13 Weeks of Summer, Processing your Photographs

We’ve just finished the first half of our 13 Weeks of Summer course. That’s all the camera and picture taking done. Now we’re about to embark on the mysterious and secretive art of Processing and Editing your pictures. This is where quite a lot of people get stuck. They put their photographs on the computer and just sit there staring at the screen wondering what to do next. To get us started we asked you all what software you used to edit your pictures and I’m glad to say not a single person said Microsoft Paint! So armed with our list of software we are going to attempt the impossible and try to give you all a taste of how you can edit a picture in most if not all of the editing suites.

For next week all you need to bring along is yourself, a notepad & pen and make sure your brains are plugged in as, unfortunately, it’s going to be more talking than doing for the first week. We’ll be starting at the basics with how to take your pictures off of your camera and put them onto your computer. Also the age old argument of RAW vs. JPG will get an airing. There’s lots of other subjects being covered on Thursday including, workflow, suggestions on file structure, colour space, metadata and keywords.

Don’t worry if you think it’s all going to be technical and far too complicated to understand. It will be explained in easy to understand English and not Technobabble!