Practical Evening

The next meeting brings us another practical evening and as usual your encouraged to bring along your camera and take part. As well as a macro demonstration we’ll have someone available to talk to you about using and getting more out of Flickr. You can also ask any photography related questions and we’ll try our best to give you an answer. But lets get on to the main event of Thursday which will be a studio shoot with a band. We supply the lights, backdrop, musicians and even a smoke machine. You just turn up with your camera and get the most out of the evening.
Ask questions, mingle and talk with everyone. As well as it being a chance to learn some new techniques or ask questions, treat it as a social event. If you’ve not been coming to the club for long or just haven’t managed to be at many of the meetings it’s a great opportunity to get to know everyone. Although I can guarantee by the end of the evening I still won’t remember everyone’s name.

There are only two things we would like you to do if you turn up on Thursday.
The first is, if you take pictures of the band then please email, Dropbox or bring them in on a memory stick so that we can let them have copies. They are giving their time up, for free, for us. They didn’t ask us if we wanted to take pictures of them, we asked them to come along. So play fair and lets pay them back for their time by giving them the photo’s.

The second thing? That’s easy, come along and have fun, enjoy yourself and take some great pictures!

Round 3 results

The results of Round 3 of our Open Competition are in. Thanks to Nick Ball for taking the time to judge the competition for us.
Congratulations to Arthur Belton on winning the Print section and Alison Davies for her first ever win in the Digital Projected.
Thanks to everyone that took part and congratulations if you managed to get in the scoring. Scroll down to see the winning pictures.
I’ve done a few things differently this time. If you have a Flickr account then I’ve made it so that if you click your name you get taken to your Flickr ‘stream (if you have one and even if you haven’t posted anything to it for ages). If you have your winning picture on your Flickr stream then clicking that picture will take you to it on your Flickr ‘stream. If it’s not on your Flickr then you will get taken to the Clubs Flickr ‘stream.
I’m also trying out a new, and hopefully better, way of laying out the pictures. So If something doesn’t seem to be right with the layout then please let me know.

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Winner Digital Projected: Naughty Girls Night Out Alison Davies	Winner Print: Bag, Towel & Shoes Arthur Belton
2nd Digital Projected: Ceratophrys ornata Mark Stone	2nd Print: Dee Barrie Tovey
3rd Digital Projected: Ice Tree Richard Price	3rd Print: Contemplation Richard Price
Highly Commended Digital Projected: Art Gallery Barrie Tovey	Highly Commended Print: Leopard Barrie Tovey
Highly Commended Digital Projected: Sky Dance Julie Coombs	Commended Print: Stand & Deliver Alison Davies
Commended Digital Projected: Flasher Richard Price

Take these pictures for us...

It's inevitable at some point when someone you know or a friend of a friend finds out you enjoy photography and are pretty good at it or have a decent camera they will try to get you to take pictures for them.
What happens when it's obviously being done just to save themselves money but they promise that eventually they just might, pay you the next time you take pictures for them? After all if they are good enough to use on your companies website then surely they deserve to get paid for taking them, right? Follow THIS link to read about an advert posted on craigslist that one photographer took exception to.

Competitions, theme’s and the gnashing of teeth

 

This weeks meeting we get to hear the results of Round 3 of the Open Competition. Which should be good, despite what might be said its still fairly open and a few people are vying for the title this year.

Now as you know we have a Flickr Group and those of you who receive the club email will know I’m always nagging you to join up. We’ll yep you’ve guessed it this is another one of those times. Although now you have even more incentive to join us. We’re starting a Flickr only themed competition. Each one will last for around 2 months, including the voting, and the winner gets to pick the subject for the next competition. If you want to see a list of the themes that have already been suggested or want to suggest some of your own then go take a look here. If you want to see the rules then they can be found hiding in the corner here. The first subject will be chosen randomly on Thursday. If your feel you need a kick to get you taking pictures then this could be the thing to get you out and snapping away.

Digital Manipulation - can you go too far?

Last nights meeting certainly made it clear that even before Photoshop and the age of digital manipulation people altered, manipulated and generally messed about with their photographs. Brian and Keith showed lots of their pictures and slides which had been manipulated in various ways, of course they also showed a lot that they hadn't altered. It sparked a lot of debate and showed a clear divide between those that thought extreme manipulation was good and those that thought even the slightest alteration was wrong. It's a topic that always seems to cause a lot of heated debate and by an amazing coincidence we have just been given our first guest blog post. Which touches on that very subject.

So here it is our first guest blog post by iBeastie.

Digital Manipulation - can you go too far?

The debate regarding the use of Digital Manipulation in photography has raged since the digital age first invaded the inner sanctum of the photographic world. The protagonists at each end of the spectrum we shall call The Purists and The Processors. As well as defining the combatants, we need to ponder on the history of photography, the validity of the reality of a two dimensional image and revisit the “Photography or Art?” discussion, perhaps by looking at some examples from the world of Art and Photography. This brief journey will hopefully make clear our conclusions.

In order to tackle the question “Can you go too far with Digital Manipulation?” we should define the protagonists. At one extreme are those who inherently distrust digital photography altogether, preferring the “Purity of Film” These are The Purists who dislike any kind of alteration to a photograph after it is taken, possibly tolerating some kind of processing to achieve a true reproduction of what was seen at the time of capture. At the other extreme are The Processors. These are the lovers of digital manipulation who will often spend more time post processing their image with effects such as HDR, cloning and the creation of composite images, than taking the photo in the field. Most photographers will fall somewhere in the middle of this spectrum.

The Purist viewpoint has evolved from the historical perception that the use of the camera, which works in real time with real objects, came to be associated with communication and news reporting and as such was seen to be objective and a means to convey reality. But this is only one side of photography and even reality can be distorted by what the photographer sees, or wishes to be seen. If reality is what they seek, then black and white imagery should have been rejected out of hand as soon as colour images were possible, after all the world is not black and white. Yet its legitimacy survives because of history, not reality. The camera is merely a tool to express an idea; it is not obliged to express truth. From the day that man put pen to paper he used it to record both fact and fiction and this truth holds for photography as well.

A key element to this debate is the validity of the reality of a two dimensional image. By this we mean that the world is 3-dimensional and by the simple fact of being 2 dimensional a photograph, can only at best ever interpret reality, not be reality. The Purists standpoint has to be based on a false assumption due to this one simple fact. Our 3-dimensional world cannot be represented in 2-dimensional “facts”. An example of this is that The Purist might use a zoom lens, which clearly distorts the 3-dimensional reality as it converts the image to 2-D. A blurred background belongs to the 2-D world, as it cannot be seen unless we could stop time. Equally a fish-eye lens will give us a view that no photographer would ever see.

So is photography a form of art or a scientific discipline of its own? Photography has to be a form of art – if not what else can it be? If not Art then it is merely a tool of the journalist or historian to record a point in time but its truth is there to be abused as much as the truth of the written word. Its credibility as a recorder of truth was blown away as soon as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle believed in fairies after seeing Elise Wright and Frances Griffiths’ photograph of fairies in their garden in 1917! There might be a science applied to acquiring an image but as demonstrated already the image cannot ever be reality or fact, only an interpretation thereof. A photograph can convey many emotions, bring back memories and create dreams. To the photographer it is even more meaningful as he will recall the effort it took to produce. It is an expression of what someone sees in the same way that a painting is. An artist like Gainsborough who painted portraits for the gentry, produced an object that would be purchased as a thing of beauty. His client did not want a “warts and all” job of his loving wife to hang over the fireplace, he wanted her to look her best, if not better. So it was up to the artist to make sure she did. How is that different to a little airbrushing? Canaletto was known to have altered the perspective of Venice to suit his canvas and composition. This is what artists do, so why should a photographer tolerate a telegraph pole or road sign spoiling his work? Simply put a Purist will chop the pole down before he presses the shutter and the Processor will clone it out of his image afterwards. Photography then is clearly a discipline of art, just as The Impressionists and The Cubists are.

In conclusion then we have to accept that photography is an art form. Within the art form we must accept that there are many movements or schools of thought. The Purists and the Processors would be just two of these schools of thought. Neither one is the correct one. Quite simply there is no correct one. Each photographer should decide for himself where they sit in the spectrum of photography. Importantly though, once ensconced in their corner of the photographic world they must be open to all disciplines. Practice what suits them but never assume that their way is the right way or the only way. Photography is a living art form and as such is fluid and alive, it reacts to and creates fashion and style. HDR can be the vogue one month, sepia all the rage the next. If you do not embrace it, do not disparage it either and if you can do something better than someone else don’t tell them not to do it because “manipulating a bad image only produces a bad manipulated image”. Budding photographers should be encouraged to try because without trying you do not learn. Similarly, if you don’t like borders then don’t use borders but that’s your choice it does not mean that all photos should not have borders. Put simply you cannot go too far with digital manipulation just as you cannot put constraints on art. Know what you like but never assume that your taste is the only taste. Remember in the words of Jerry Lodriguss, “Writers massage the language of words; photographers massage the language of light”.

If this post has made you want to discuss this subject then just click on "post a comment". Which is just down the page a little bit from here.