DIG News - May 2016

Allium Seedhead by Paula Davies FRPS

Spring is here – the flowers and trees are out, so every opportunity to get out and about with our cameras. So why not share your little works of art with us, either on the DIG Forum or via your own RPS Gallery?

CONGRATULATIONS

It has been a great month for some of our DIG members, all of whom are to be congratulated for their Distinctions. I don’t think we have ever had such a strong list of ARPS successes. It would be great to feature them all but it feels like I have to choose just one each month –unless of course you all give me feedback that you want to see more !

John Livy LRPS HampshireAlastair Lofthouse LRPS HampshireSam Segar LRPS HertfordshireGlyn Paton LRPS WiltshireNeil Sumner LRPS Cheshire

Nancy Laurie ARPS (Creative) StirlingshireLen Claydon APRS (Creative) CheshireJill Stanley APRS (Pictorial) HampshireBarry Badcock ARPS (Creative) CambridgeshireCatherine Jones ARPS (Creative) Fife

This month we will feature the successful ARPS panel from Len Claydon.

I would describe my style of photography as creative portraits. Most of the images I take of people are grab shots, with the odd exception. I am naturally attracted to colourful striking images in art as well as photography and I think that this evident in the panel.

Len Claydon’s work first came to my attention when he was a DIG Gold medal winner of the 2015 PI Comp. He has since gone on to recently achieve his ARPS with a delightful panel of Creative images, including some beguiling portraits. Len’s full panel of images can be viewed on the Macclesfield CC web site HERE

I started my distinction journey in 2011 and following three advisory days I proceeded to gain LRPS in 2012. It has taken me almost four years and two attempts to gain ARPS, but the wait has been worth it.

The final panel was made up of three rows of differing styles. The top row consisted of portraits of a painterly style, one of which was my granddaughter Emma. The second row was made up of characters with interesting faces from the Edinburgh Festival and the bottom row of the panel made up of slightly surreal subjects.

Nine of the panel of fifteen prints have gained acceptances at National and International Salons and in some cases have won awards.

I have had many hobbies during the past forty years but photography is the only one that has lasted the course. The fact that photography presents you with endless possibilities and challenges makes it impossible to lose interest in it as a hobby.

Sadness

Tipping Point

RPS WEBSITE UPDATE

Good news! The new RPS server is now up and running and the results are most pleasing. At last we have a web site that operates at normal web speed – not that eternal wait wondering if a page will ever load. You can now zip around and login without the frustrations. It makes using the RPS web site the pleasure it should be for us all.

Further to that good news is another improvement that is very encouraging. Once logged in and (say) active on the DIG forum if you moved away from your desk and returned a little later to resume what you were doing, you used to find you had been timed out. Now the log in time is 3 hours from last activity – hooray. What we have been asking for in ages.

So now it should be even easier for you all to visit the forum, post your images either for discussion or in the monthly competition, ask questions of other members. Given it has just got easier then we hope to see more of you participating.

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DIG FORUM

In April there were a few less of you competing in the Forum monthly competition. It isn’t onerous and don’t forget your scores each month will be accumulated so that the individual with the highest score at theend of January 2017 will win a RPS Portfolio 3.

Even if you do not compete there is no reason why you cannot view the images around the 3rd week of the month and vote for your winner. Once logged on to the RPS web site go to HERE

We asked Paula for a few words about her winning image…..

Allium Seedhead

I have been doing a photo a day project since June 2014 and at times I need to take a photograph indoors when the weather is inclement or I don’t have time to be out and about with the camera. With this in mind I am building up a collection of dried flowers and seed heads to use in still life images like this one. It was photographed in natural daylight in our east facing conservatory which has windows on three sides and a translucent plastic roof. It was processed in Lightroom followed by conversion to monochrome with Nik Silver Efex. Having done that back in Lightroom I decided to try split toning the image. If you are interested in taking part in the same project the website I use is www.blipfoto.com.

2nd placed was Graham Relf with ‘Smile’. Here is his explanation….

This was taken with a LensBaby 5.8mm fisheye lens on Canon 5D3. The lens is superb optically but with a reflective inner cylinder that produces a ring of flares outside the circle. I have used that to good effect in some images but here, obviously, I have cropped it off.

Congratulations to Paula Davies with another of her minimalist images “Allium Seedhead” – as shown on our front page this month. This is the second month running where Paula and Graham have held the 1st and 2nd places – so come on folks the challenge is on to see if someone else can take the crown next month.

I used another image from this lens for a club projected image competition recently and it occurred to me that I could stretch the circle horizontally to fill the normal 4:3 aspect ratio. So this one's had the same treatment - we are the Digital Group after all! The LensBaby lens captures more than 180 degrees(!) so it was impossible to keep the tripod out of the shot and it had to be tidied away digitally. I do strive for the Escheresque: the picture frame really was on the wall but its contents have been changed to echo the piano keys. Without that the image worked much less well.

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TUTORIALS FROM KEN PAYNE

We hope that some of you will have enjoyed the Ken Payne tutorials last month, but without feedback it is difficult to gauge if you are enjoying this new idea or not. So we will press on and see how it goes…..

This month we will feature two new tutorialsPhotoshop CC – ‘How to add a new Background’Adjustments are first made in Lightroom CC and after using the Refine Edge Tool to refine the selection Ken shows us how to add a background HERE

Second tutorial is one for Lightroom users who are just getting to grips with the way simple changes can give your images greater impact.‘Good Basic Adjustments for More Impact’ can be viewed HERE

before …………………………………… and after

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MIRRORLESS

My Mirrorless Month: Update on the Fuji X-T10 , by Jim Buckley LRPS

It’s just so darn complicated and I haven’t yet mastered it! Last month Imentioned the camera’s overwhelming multiplicity of functions: well,I’m still overwhelmed. It’s almost as though Fuji took the view thatbecause the electronics can do it, let’s build it into the camera.Surprisingly, none of the reviews which I studied mentioned this.Perhaps the reviewers are all teenager scribblers for whom thiselectronic stuff is second nature?

So, how am I getting on? The instruction book is as bad as they get but Ino longer inadvertently press some of the rear buttons when shooting,and anyway they can be locked to avoid that. The Q (Quick settings)button works well, allowing access to key settings, and almosteverything can be customised - even the direction of rotation of themanual focusing ring on the lens.

Most importantly, image quality really is first class and the electronicviewfinder is excellent. Tilting the rear LCD screen allowed me to getshots when holding the camera above my head or low down.

I said last time that this camera won’t suit sports, wildlife and wedding photographers. So, bold as ever, I took it to a major tennis tournament and a friend’s wedding anniversary. The 18-55mm f/2.8-f/4 lens performed remarkably well at the tennis. We were sitting in the back row and here is the full frame shot at f/5.0. The crop shown in blue produced a crisp A4 print without any extra work.

For the anniversary celebration, I found the camera light and easy tohandle but far too slow in shutter and flash response to be comfortablefor this sort of occasion.

I’ve already made two photobooks - and, by the way, I reckon that youcan do a whole lot worse than Photobox in the UK - and both (non-photographer) recipients have immediately commented on the qualityof the images.

The verdict? Is the mirrorless revolution here? Certainly not a whole-hearted endorsement. If you are happy with your DSLR and don’t mind the weight, there’s no reason to change. But if, like me, you don’t want to lug all that weight around when you are on holiday and are prepared to invest some time in learning how a new camera works you will be very pleased with the results. It’s certainly an ideal travel camera. It’s unobtrusive and suits the sort of shots I like to take. I’m happy to carry it all day. And if you are moving up from a compact camera this is certainly a route to consider although there are now new lightweightDSLRs available.

….and here’s a couple more shots from Jim, just to prove the quality..

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MEMBERS GALLERY

For whatever reason it seems I am choosing to feature mono work from our members galleries. This month it is street photography from Paul Nash that caught my eye.

RPS Galleries are an easy way to share your work with other members; post your RPS successful panels or bodies of own work that you especially enjoy. To see more of Pauls’ images then do click HERE but in the meantime here are a couple to whet your appetite……

Mirror mirror You looking at me?

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2016 PROJECTED IMAGE COMPETITION

In mid May this years DIG PI Comp will be open for business – that is ready to accept your chosen images you wish to enter in this years competition.

It is free to enter. Exclusive to DIG members Has two classes – open and creative You may submit 4 images, either all in one class or across both For full information go to the comp web page HERE

FOCUS ON OVERSEAS MEMBERS

Notes from Invercargill way down in the Antipodes.

Hi, we live in New Zealand, which is about as far from the United Kingdom that you can be. Our country consists of two main islands with most of the population living in the North Island. Surprise, surprise, the other is called the South Island (S.I.). Both are long and thin, with a mountain range running down the spine of the South Island. The islands lie more or less along the 174 E longitude and span less than a 1000 miles. We have 9300 miles of coast line and have only about 4.5 million people scattered throughout.

Due to the nature of the geography of the S.I wild extremes of climate arethe norm. Rainfall on the west coast of the S.I. can be as much as 320 inches or 26 feet of rain! While over the mountains on the eastern side of the island, Central Otago only averages 12 inches per year. This diversity of weather obviously means that not all studies will utilise the “golden hours”, in fact it would be misrepresentation of what really happens here.

I have chosen a variety of landscapes to give you a feel for our beautiful and varied South Island.

We are a long way from the RPS but computers reduce that to nothing. I received tremendous comments from the one opportunity I had as a distant applicant and as such would strongly recommend using every chance you get to attend the Advisory days etc that are available to others.

Michael Pemberton LRPS LNZPS

I noted recently that one of our members from New Zealand had recently gained his LRPS and it fascinated me that the letters after his name read LRPS LNZPS – so I wanted to know more. It seems the LNZPS is very similar to our LRPS and is awarded by the Photographic Society of New Zealand http://photography.org.nz

Dawn light, Bendigo

Milford Valley

Tree Passage, Doubtful Sound

Raukokore

Chair note - New Zealand has long since been on my list of places I want to visit and these super shots have strengthen my resolve !

Your Committee are now working on the next DI Expo and we hope to have some firm news for you all shortly. We are aiming for 23rd

September 2017, but nothing is booked or confirmed yet. But you might want to pencil in that date, as I know some of you told us last time that we didn’t give you enough prior warning of the date.

Regards

JanetJanet Haines ARPSDIG Chair

digchair@rps.org