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.

Red Hot Fun

Hanneke and I went a bit insane last night and went out with some of the Bristol Flickr Group to try out Light Painting and Wire wool spinning.

Wondering just how close my camera was to get this shot? Well if you visit this picture you can see my camera by the pillar on the left and the one on the right is Hanneke’s. Luckily for us they didn’t melt. Yes that was red hot metal flying around. I found out the hard way just how hot it was during this shot when a piece bounced off the pillar, straight through the gap and hit me on the top of my head. Good job I didn’t have enough hair for it to stick to!

So what do you think? Reckon we could do this in the Langton’s Car Park?!!!!!

13 Weeks of Summer

We started our "13 Weeks of Summer" tuition course last week and I'm glad to say it went amazingly well. Everyone I spoke to thought it was well explained and easy to follow. Which is good because this week we're going to be carrying on with the Exposure Triangle and delving deeper into Shutter Speed, Aperture and ISO. Don't worry though it's not going to get too heavy. The plan is to give a little talk on them with a few examples of how to combine all three to get the effect you want in your picture.Then for most of the evening we'll split into groups and you'll all be doing plenty of hands on practice.

So you can get the most out of this weeks session we'd love you to bring along your camera, it's instruction manual (if possible) and if you have one a Tripod. Even if you only have a small Gorillapod that's fine. I know not all of you will be able to bring tripods but we should be able to get by if we share the ones we do have.

Skomer 2011

The day started at Burger King in Bristol at 5 am. Kev, Rich, Ian, Simon and me all bleary eyed but eager. A three hour car journey in front of us to get to Martins Haven for the ferry to Skomer. First stop Haverfordwest at 07:30 for a McDonalds breakfast, egg and bacon Mcmuffin for me, TWO for Kevin FB. 30 minutes and a couple of wrong turns later and we arrived at Martins Haven. At this point we were all a bit scepticle as to whether the ferry would cross due to the high winds. The cloud was breaking and it looked like it was going to brighten up but the winds remained. The parking attendant assured us the ferry was still crossing so we grabbed our gear and set off to the ticket kiosk next to the cove. From here we could see the sea, and my god it was quite a swell. The pilot of the boat made his way to the beach past the queue and said he would go out and see what it was like first before he took anyone. Once enough tickets were sold for the first boat full (40) they stopped until we heard from the pilot. Whilst waiting in the howling wind we watched while the sea came rolloing in. Then it clouded over once more and the rain started. What on earth were we thinking of? We continues to watch as the boat pulled out of the sheltered cove, up over the rollers and the bow smacking down in the following trough. We were all looking at each other not saying a word, we didn't have to. The boat disappeared around the headland and we waited. 10 minutes later over the crackle of the radio we the the words we had at first been dreading but were probably quite relieved to to hear, "No go, getting battered by a force 6 here".

That was that. Back up to car and on to plan B. What was plan B. Oh we didn't have one, bugger.

Ok back to Haverfordwest Information centre pick up some leaflets and back to Mcdonalds to discuss. With more caffiene inside us we decided to head for llanelli to the Wild fowl and wetlands trust there. We arrived there at about midday and walked the entire site. Plenty of bird shots were taken with Damselflies and lizards to boot. Ian may well have been converted, as self confessed Damdelfly hater, he thoroughly enjoyed the challenge of getting a good Damselfly shot. After doing the wild bird section where we shot Damselflies and lizards because the birds were just too easy we went on to the captive section. Here the birds are much more challenging so we concentrated on this (honest). By the time we finished here it was about 5PM and general concensus was that it wasn't bad but not as good as Slimbridge.

From here we felt perhaps a visit to Ogmore-on-sea was in order to maybe get some beach and sky shots. Arrived here about 6PM and the tide was in, so not much beach there. Not our day. Never the less we still got down onto the little bit of beach and hpefully got some useable shots.

After this it was around 7PM and we were all knackered so felt it was time to head home. Back to Burger King for about 8 ish.

Even though we were up at 5am, had a 3 hour journey, got soaked waiting a a queue, to then drive back to a wetlands centre that wasn't as good as one we could have gone to 30 minutes from home and then go to get some beach shots when the tide was in. We still enjoyed ourselves. It was a day when things were just against us, but we made the best of it and visited places we normally wouldn't have. In the process we enjoyed ourselves had a laugh and Simon was able to catch up on his sleep in the car.

Reflex Awards

All year you’ve been entering our Open Competition. You’ve taken pictures, edited & printed until your fingers bled and now you get to find out who the winners are!

Congratulations to everyone that won and thanks to all of you that took part. This years competition was pretty close and the standard of entries was superb. So start snapping away to get your pictures ready for next season. It’s sure to be hotly contended again.

As usual names that are underlined in yellow are links that take you to that person’s Flickr pages.

 

	Photographer of the Year or, “who can look the most like a rabbit in the headlights” goes to Ian Coombs Congratulations and next year were banning Lumix camera’s & JPG’s!
Novice of the Year Goes to Simon Xu (pictured) and Louise Iddon Congratulations to both of you.
	Stan Scantlebury Shield (Best DPI of the Year) goes to Alison Davies For her picture Unbroken Gaze
John Hankin Shield (Best Print of the Year) goes to Arthur Belton for his print Lily
	Print Photographer of the Year goes to Ian Coombs
Digital Projected Image Photographer of the Year goes to Mark Stone

If you didn’t enter then please consider having a go next time. You’ve seen what everyone else can do and it’s a sure bet that your pictures are just as good. So come on If you don’t try you’ll never know if you could win or not.