phoenix camera club newsletter...

PHOENIX CAMERA CLUB – NEWSLETTER 013/10/2014

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Meeting 13th October 2014

This was a session in which members were able to show some of their photographs to other members & obtain some feedback.

Although most provided around 6 images, only 3 were shown in order to keep to time.

Rob made the important point that, as the photographer, you should know what the intended purpose of your photo will be before you take it.

Is it, for example, as a record of something for your own enjoyment or your family’s? Is it to capture a hobby? Is it for a competition? Is it for intended sale? & so on.

Here are some examples in no particular order.

Roy Alexander The first is Roy Alexander’s Bridesmaids. It’s a beautiful record of his daughter’s wedding. Roy has captured the moment when the bridesmaids are each looking at the bride.

This is a record shot that has immense meaning for the family & friends. We suggested perhaps a slight crop to remove the distracting wall might (or might not) look better.

Roy, like many, does not usually change the aspect ratio (the ration of the width to the height), but this is a valuable

tool. Close cropping changes the dynamics of the image. If we crop Roy’s photo:

We get an image that emphasises the joy & has a wider appeal. The same is true of Roy’s second image:

It is relevant as a record shot to everyone in our group. But, again, a tight crop can give it a wider appeal to those who don’t know the individuals on the bench & cuts out some distractions. It took 95 seconds to clone out the tripod & crop the image to give this:

A few seconds more to turn it into B&W & a tighter crop:


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Here are some of Roy’s other shots, also taken as records of interesting events (why most people take photos). They are good images with potential for other purposes.

And…

Geoff Allsop We talked about Geoff’s shot of a swan with its head beneath the surface. It makes a nice change from the Cliché shots of swans swimming majestically or diving with their bottoms & legs in the air.

It was shot with the camera at ISO 100 f/5 @ 1/180s with the camera zoomed out to a wide angle of 33 mm.

For those of us like me that should really get out more & live a life, I known that this is the sort of exposure you get on a moderately bright overcast day in the UK. Geoff confirmed this.

On an overcast day, although the sky is dull, the lighting is diffuse. This has worked to Geoff’s advantage because it has reduced the brightness variation in the image so that the swan’s feathers are visible & so is the head. The feathers are burnt out in places, but the information seems to be there & could probably be recovered with a mild edit.

If the sun had been shining the ripples would have been more distinct (possibly burnt out) & it would have been harder to get detail in the head & the body. As Rob Cross pointed out, a polarising filter (linear) would have provided control & is an essential item in any camera bag (stops writing newsletter to check he has one in his bag).

Geoff obviously never goes on a photo expedition without a healthy breakfast & enough apples to keep the doctor away for a week!

But this shot illustrates how a good, vibrant photo can come out of everyday objects if (unlike me) you are smart enough to see them. The purists might say that the spoon should have been in the image, but I’ve seen spoons before & know what they look like, so it works for me. The stainless steel thingy in the top right is neither in nor out & the missing left edge of the bowl is also “half pregnant” &


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could be all in or cropped more. The jointing bar on the worktop is distracting (options: new worktop in kitchen, new worktop in photoshop; put bowls somewhere else. BUT the image is a good one with vibrant colours. As we said when we talked about the mysteries photos, most images are seen for 15 seconds or far less. The colours in this one grab your attention.

Here it is with an even more aggressive crop & a new worktop. I have done this quickly for the newlsletter. It wasn’t done in Photoshop but in Corel Paintshop Pro because I find it more powerful & faster to get what I want.

This was taken at a focal length of 5mm, so my guess is that a zoom compact camera was used set to widest angle. You can see that the bowl is almost square on to the camera & we are looking down on it, but we are looking at an angle of about 45 degrees at the fruit & can see the sides of the glass bowl & the fruit.

Some, wrongly, think that this is lens distortion. It is not. It is simple geometry. A wide angle lens, as the name says,

sees over a wide angle.

If we had taken the same shot with the camera focal length set to “normal” the bowl would have looked something like this.

And if we had kept the camera in the same place but tilted it up to shoot the apples, we would have got this.

This effect (caused by Geoff’s use of a very wide angle lens) looking down on the breakfast bowl, with the fruit in the background at an angle helps to emphasise that the breakfast bowl is the important object in the shot & the fruit are the “supporting” interest.

Suitably cropped it is the sort of image that a magazine like Womans Own or AXA healthcare might pay for to illustrate an article on healthy eating.

And here is Geoff’s shot of a butterfly, which are in the Papilionoidea family. Which ends in –no-idea & aptly sums up my grasp of butterfly species. As every small schoolboy knows (I had to ask a small schoolboy) this one is what we call a Red Admiral. What the butterfly calls itself is anyone’s guess.

The shot was taken at ISO 100, 25mm f/8 @ 1/250s. Probably on a compact camera?

In this photo the darkest & lightest areas show no detail, so you cannot see the thorax but there is a bit of detail in the image itself that could be recovered slightly.

As there is no sign of a pin, this is probably a “grab shot” & a good one at that.

Geoffrey Setterfield Geoff showed us some exciting action shots of water sports.

They are the sort of shots that a competition judge would say “it would have been nice if…”, without proper regard for the fact that Geoffrey is capturing a fleeting moment.


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The tight crop conveys the vigour, force & turbulence of the water & leaves the viewer in no doubt about the nature of the activity.

Likewise, Geoff’s shot of this guy:

A good vantage point has his head on the left & upper “third” & moving into the frame. But this is a “rule” that is worth breaking.

And again, simply to illustrate how a tight crop can alter an image:

Here we emphasise the strong diagonal & his eyes on his paddle. So again we have an image that can be used in many different ways.

Lastly we have a shot taken by Geoff as he consigned members of his family to a potentially watery grave with, according to Geoff, a very real risk of reprisals!

Geoff purchased a “red letter day” event as a gift & shot the results. Now he lives in fear of what they will buy him to get their own back.

The image is a strong one. This is partly because of the muted colours in the main image & the vibrant colours of the boat & its occupants.

Being in what is only an advanced inflatable relative of a LiLo air bed & being washed at speed down a river with rocks that can puncture it, is not my idea of fun.

What is good about these images is that they are crisp considering the action & its unpredictability.

Meeting 20th October 2014

Rob Cross says “Bring along your cameras!” because it is a get to know how to use your camera meeting.

I won’t be bringing mine, because as you can see, it is a bit big. This camera was, in fact, built in 1900 to photograph a locomotive & its carriages in one shot.

The Chicago & Alton Railway had just built a special 8-car train. The railway director, Mr Charlton, thought his train was “the most handsome train in the world” & asked a professional photographer (Mr Lawrence – standing by the lens) to make an 8ft long photograph. Charlton did not want a series of shots joined together because his train was “faultless” & he did not want any defects in the image.

The hand-coated glass negative was 8ft 4½ inches wide.

The length of the camera was 20ft but could be folded to a mere 3ft.

It weighed 0.625 tons

It required a crew of 15 to operate it.

The exposure time (shutter speed) was 2½ minutes (150 seconds)


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I tracked down (no pun intended) the picture that was taken.

Like Ian Halstead’s train shots (which we saw a couple of months ago & were in the newsletter), Mr Lawrence had to find a suitable field from which to take the photograph.

Unlike Ian, Lawrence had to transport his half ton camera 6 miles to take the shot & with a 150 second exposure time the train was stopped for the photos.

It wasn’t the only photo Lawrence took with his “miniature” camera. He photographed several city panoramas such as San Francisco & Los Angeles. Three of his prints were shown at the Paris Exposition of 1900. The judges were critical (so no change there in over 114 years!) & dismissed them as fakes.

When it was proven that they were genuine, Lawrence was awarded the ‘Grand Prize of the World for Photographic Excellence.’ That looks better on your CV than FRPS!

1900 was the same year that George Eastman launched his Kodak Brownie with the slogan “you press the button – we do the rest”. It was pre-loaded with film & you just sent it off to Kodak & got it back reloaded plus your prints.

That’s not so different to today’s digital cameras but without all the knobs, dials, menus & fiddly bits that we don’t understand, just a button & a thingy to look through.

So if you have a box brownie, Rob Cross’s task on the 20th October should be easy. All he has to do is show you where to look & what to press.

Otherwise, if, like this, you don’t know how to get the most out of your camera please bring it along to find out a bit more about using it.

Photo by courtesy of www.funnyandhappy.com

Possible Studio Shoot with a Professional Model

I am considering (note the word considering) booking a photo session with a professional model at TWorld Studios.

I will only do it if there are sufficient numbers interested in joining me & sharing the cost. I need a minimum of 6 photographers otherwise I cannot book it. I won’t offer this only to the Phoenix members, but to anyone who wants to take part in the shoot.

I will limit the numbers to a maximum of 8 so that no one is in anyone else’s way & everyone has a flash trigger remote control on their camera & can instruct the model.

This is a proper 3 hour session at a professional fully equipped studio with a professional female model.

The cost will be £40 per photographer.

The date I propose is Friday 14th November at 19:00 in the evening, finishing at 22:00 approx.

It would be:

3 hour Studio session.

Professional model.

4 different looks for photographers to shoot.

Modelling up to the levels of glamour/implied nude.

Experience of variety of studio lighting & backgrounds with expert on hand to help/guide.

Make up artist included to create the 4 different looks.

Limited to an absolute maximum of 8 photographers so everyone gets time to shoot & direct the model.

TWORLDSTUDIO is at www.tworldstudio.co.uk

It is just off the A5/A38/M6 Toll Roundabout at Weeford & there is parking.

Warren who owns the studio is a very helpful & friendly person who provided a “studio lighting session” for the Rugeley & Armitage Camera Club before. He will help anyone who is a novice get the most out of it

http://www.funnyandhappy.com/

http://www.tworldstudio.co.uk/


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Here are two shots from that “studio lighting session” at Tworldstudios. The “models” are other members of Rugeley & Armitage Camera Club. So some of them are unfortunate enough to have photos of me as the “model”.

Please email me by Friday 24th if you want to participate so that I can determine if it viable or not.

[email protected]

Cannock Photographic Society

In a group like ours, it is very clear that we enjoy hearing about the efforts & experiences of others & seeing their photos. We are more likely to be encouraged when we see the work of other members.

In my case this often triggers the “I fancy having a go at that!” reaction. [N.B. this excludes white water canoeing & anything that involves getting down on all fours to photograph close relatives of slugs].

Roy Alexander, who is always an enthusiastic contributor to the group’s activities has kindly provided this:

It is Cannock Photographic Society’s 57th Annual Print Exhibition. The poster is self-explanatory.

Calendars

Rob still has a plentiful supply of calendars. That’s a posh way of saying that we need to sell more to break even.

Can you please encourage others to buy these calendars, especially if you are also in another Phoenix Group.

If we don’t help persuade others, then, not only will your superb images not be on display, but we all might have to take turns next to the Big Issue seller in Lichfield.

mailto:[email protected]


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Photographs of Cannock and Solar Panels

A new Community Benefit Society called Chase Community Solar (CCS) will be launched on 4th November.

Community Benefit Societies are regulated by the FCA & only exist to help the local community.

CCS raise money (& pay interest) to install solar panels on council

bungalows so residents get free solar electricity to reduce energy bills. The surplus money from solar electricity goes back into the community.

www.chasesolar.org.uk .

It is run by volunteers who donate their time & expertise. They want to make an AV (on a zero budget) about solar energy & the benefits to the Cannock Chase Community.

In an AV the photos are used to illustrate the story & will change every 5-15 seconds. So, they need a lot of images.

If you have any suitable images that depict:

Sunlight or daylight.(solar panels work on overcast days too)

Cannock Chase (not just the pretty bits – the ugly bits too)

The residential areas of Cannock

Council bungalows in Cannock

Solar panels on roofs.

Gloomy shots of Rugeley power station (or any others)

Street scenes & other shots depicting people who might live in bungalows or just the “community”.

Anything else that might help as background images for the story.

Could you email them to me please?

All AVs use rapidly changing sets of images that loosely support what is being said.

For example, talk about the community in Cannock might use all sorts of images of the

area and people in it. So images don’t have to be competition grade or even of exciting subjects.

When it is eventually completed you will get to see it.

Arts Council Quiz Night 18th Nov

Rob Cross has explained that we will have an exhibition at the Quiz Night run by the Cannock Arts Council this coming Saturday. Rob wanted volunteers to join him to form a quiz team. These events are good friendly fun with cheap beer. Please contact Rob for details.

At the same time the Phoenix Music Group is hosting its Country & Western Evening on Saturday 18th (tickets all sold out).

This will be photographed by our own John Simons (I only put this in, in case John forgets).

Exploding Bubbles

We still have not had a session where we can see members’ pictures of butane-filled bubbles bursting into flames.

So please bring your shots along.

Manipulating Images

Three members have asked for a session on how to manipulate images in photo-editing programs to create composite images.

Bob Bell

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