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Contents

PLEASE BE AWARE THAT VIEWS EXPRESSED BY INDIVIDUALS IN THIS

NEWSLETTER ARE NOT NECESSARILY THOSE OF THE WCPF.

THE WCPF EXECUTIVE

President’s Piece 4

Exciting New Competition 5

Zebras 6

Judges and Competitions 7

The Monochrome Image 8

Camera Club Ladies’ Evening 9

Notes from Zummerset 10

Calendar Girls - and Boys! 11

Details of who is who on the Executive can be found on the website. Just click on this link -

http://www.wcpf.org.uk/pages/home/executive-committee.php

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E v e n t Details

7th January 2013 - Entries open.12th April 2013 - Entries close.26-28th April 2013 - Judging

1st Cheltenham International Salon of Photography.Further details on www.cheltenhamcameraclub.co.uk

From Sunday 3rd February 2013 - Satur-day 9th February 2013.Venice Carnival.

Email tonytravel@blueyonder.co.uk for full de-tails. Or phone 0117-956-1896. Answer phone on this number.

9th FebruaryWAVES AGM and Theme Day.

At St Thomas Church Hall, York Buildings, Trow-bridge, Wiltshire BA14 8PF. See more at -http://www.waves-avgroup.co.uk

10th February.DPIC

At the Corn Exchange, Market Street Exeter. EX1 1BW..From 9.30am (for 10.30 start) finishes at 4.00. See www.wcpf.org.uk for details.

10th February - closing date forKnightshayes Trophy

Bring entries with you when attending above event.Entry details - click herehttp://www.wcpf.org.uk/pages/knightshayes-trophy.php

ENTRIES NOW OPEN FOR MEMBERS’ EXHIBITION AT BUCKFASTLEIGH, DEVON.

Click here for online entry http://photoexhib.co.uk/wcpf/login.php

16th FebruaryWAVES Theme Day - subject “My Favour-ite Place”

At St Thomas Church Hall, York Buildings, Trowbridge, Wiltshire BA14 8PT. Meet at 10.00am for 10.30am start.

9th March 2013 Council Meeting followed by judging ofKnightshayes Trophy

At The Village Hall, Clyst St Mary, nr Exeter. EX5 1BG See latest details at - http://www.wcpf.org.uk/pages/agm-council-meetings.php

9th March 2013. Closing Date for entry to WCPF Members’ Exhibition.

Brings prints and DPIs to above meeting.More details click here - Online entry herehttp://photoexhib.co.uk/wcpf/login.php

24th March.Richard Curtis of Adobe will present talks on Elements, Photoshop CS6 and Light-room

At The Village Hall, Clyst St Mary, nr Exeter. EX5 1BG. Tickets £3 - £5. Contact Janet Haines on 01308-428219 or email janet.haines@btinternet.com

13th AprilWCPF AV Competition

At The Village Hall, Clyst St Mary, nr Exeter. EX5 1BG More details at - http://www.wcpf.org.uk/pages/audio-visual.php

14th April.RPS Visual Arts Group meeting with Chris Palmer, Paul Mitchell and Steve Smith.

At The Dolphin Hotel, Bovey Tracey. TQ13 9AL. 10.00am - 4.00pm. More details fromlinda.wevill@btinternet.com

DIARY DATES

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PRESIDENT’S PIECE

DPIC 2013

With entries closed, 49 Clubs have entered for our major club competition at the Exeter Corn Exchange on 10th February - which means we will be treated to 980 first class images on the day. I would urge clubs and members to now book tickets to attend this very enjoyable and exciting event. I would advise you to make local car sharing arrangements if possible, to minimise fuel and parking costs.

The ticket price remains unchanged at only £5.50 and seats are booked directly through the Corn Exchange which offers ticket sales in person at the venue, or over the telephone Monday - Friday between 9:30 – 6:30. Credit cards are subject to a 1½% surcharge to the customer but debit cards are free. This year on-line ticket sales are also be available 24 hours a day subject to a 5% surcharge (28 pence per ticket) but price includes postage. Corn Exchange telephone 01392 665938. website: http://www.exeter.gov.uk/cornexchange/index.aspx?articleid=14091

YOU TUBE AGAIN!I understand some readers enjoyed the Mark Carwardine link last month, so to close I suggest you take a look at “Battle at Kruger” http://youtu.be/LU8DDYz68kM. With 70 million hits already, many of you may already have seen it, but despite the soundtrack this remains one of the most amazing eight minutes of wildlife video you will ever see. (May disturb those of a sensitive nature. Ed)

Hope you enjoy this Newsletter – the Editor seems to want to start 2013 with a bang rather than a whimper.

Now read on for details of an exciting new competition for Clubs to be involved in!

Eddy Lane

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Exciting New Competition for 2013

Further to my mentioning this idea at the AGM I am delighted to give more details of the all-new WCPF Community Award, an annual competition for the best club collaborative project. A grandiose title which may scare some - but read on!

It’s designed to encourage clubs to become more involved in local life by working with and supporting charities and other organisations in their area. It has been noticed while out and about judging or giving talks that many clubs within our Federation quietly do a lot for their community. So - why not reward these efforts?

The idea is throughout 2013 articles about various local collaborations will be published in the WCPF Newsletter.

How Will This Run?

To Enter for the Award - All WCPF Camera Clubs will be eligible to submit an article to the Newsletter describing one event which they’ve organised to the benefit of their community or a charity. Don’t worry if writing the article is daunting! Just let Ann have some bullet points describing your event (the idea, how it’s organised, who benefitted and maybe a couple of photographs.) Ann will write something for you, and send a draft to your club to approve. An A4 page is the required size, but again, Ann will precise this if it is too long. Images to illustrate an article to be JPEGs at 72dpis, sRGB and no bigger than 250pixels in the longest measurement.

The Purpose of the Award? Many regional clubs have already been successfully involved with their local communities - but don’t make a song and dance about it! With well organised and varied programmes, clubs who work with their communities have found that these kinds of activities raises public awareness of a camera club’s profile while at the same time creating interesting photo opportunities (just take a look at pages 10 and 11 in this issue to see what I mean?

Therefore, to encourage even more participation within local communities, it is proposed to award a £100 donation by the WCPF to a registered charity of the winning club’s choice. The award will be made at DPIC 2014.

Voting will be online, so keep an eye on www.wcpf.org.uk for this facility when the competition gets under way, and don’t forget to keep an eye on the newsletter to see how things develop!

Eddy Lane : President

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ZEBRAS

“Leopard!” cried the driver to his startled passengers as he swung the safari vehicle in a tight U-turn through the low growing bush. Word had come by mobile phone from a fellow driver, already at the scene.

They arrived to find a semi-circle of trucks, their occupants gazing at the partially concealed animal fifty yards away. Some were changing lenses while others checked exposure and focus. Everyone was waiting for the leopard to move and show itself completely. A typical day on a Botswana safari.

Simon reflected on what he had captured so far. The elephants had been co-operative at water holes with all their splashing, spraying and rolling about. Lions could have been better, damn things always insisted on ly-ing in the shade. Wild dogs had been a surprise with their black and white coats accentuated when the pack flopped down together in dappled sunlight. Far off, beyond the reclining leopard a small herd of zebras made their leisurely way across a gap in the bush.

Simon turned to his wife. “D’you know?” he said. “We’ve seen zebras everywhere but I still don’t have a de-cent shot of one.”

“There are a few days left” she replied, “You can still get lucky. You only just missed a good one yesterday.”

Simon thought about that. Away from the main group, a solitary beast had come to graze close by the track where they had stopped. He raised his camera, framed the shot and waited for the animal to raise its head and perhaps even look in his direction. A sudden commotion distracted them both and a lion crashed through the bush towards the zebra which set off at speed. It maintained its seemingly effortless gallop until the lion gave up. So did Simon. There had been other chances but either something more interesting appeared or the zebras simply drifted away without posing.

Now, the half-hidden leopard had crept into dense bush and fifty photographers sighed and lowered their cameras. Blue smoke made a haze in the strong sunlight as ten trucks started engines and dispersed in search of other attractions.

The rest of the safari went well. Evenings at a water hole were rewarding. The warm light of a setting sun turned the browns on giraffes to bright orange and gave Simon some of his best shots. Antelopes came and went and noisy baboons shattered everyone’s peace and provided entertainment. But still no zebras.

Their tour was planned to finish in Zambia with a couple of nights at Victoria Falls and they arrived at the hotel to see a rainbow in the spray rising high above the trees and to hear the faint roar of ‘The Smoke That Thunders’. The curtains were closed in their air conditioned hotel room and Simon’s wife drew them back to reveal – zebras!

Simon snatched up his camera and rushed outside. Six or more were grazing calmly on the hotel lawn, quite unconcerned at guests pass-ing close by on the path.

Returning to the room after a frantic photo session, “Got them at last.” He grinned.

His wife grinned back. “Pity you can’t use them in a Nature Compe-tition.” She said.

“Why ever not?” He frowned.

“It’s obvious, they’ve domesticated themselves.”

CLUBMAN

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Judges and Competitions

The debate about competitions and judging seems to be raging in most clubs. We are getting new members who want honest critiques of their work and more experienced members moving away from club competitions. It seems that once they have tasted success they are looking for some new challenge. I think I know what happens; success breeds confidence and with confidence photogra-phers start to push the boundaries of their photography.

The problem is that some local club judges don’t understand this work and downgrade it, much to the frustration of the experienced photographer. Hence they turn against club competitions and con-centrate only on Salons which are judged by very experienced international judges.

So I think the real problem is to do with club judging not competitions as such. I have some sympa-thy with this as I once had a print praised with comments like ‘I could have this on my wall’ and ‘this is good enough to be in an art gallery’ and then the print was given 10 out of 20! Lots of praise but no critique or reason for its low mark, very frustrating.

What I would like to see happen is more of our best photographers judging, but they are reluctant to do so. It seems that the loudest complaints come from those not prepared to judge!!

One solution I am trying at Newton Abbot is to invited a team of three highly experienced, and re-spected photographers from a local club to judge one of our competitions and share the critique of our work. From our club point of view we shall be getting the views of three judges which could be very interesting, especially if they disagree! And from the judges’ point of view, they help each other and share the task of standing in front of an audience. I’ll let you know how it goes, from both the club and judges’ points of view.

We have also changed our rules for our four monthly competitions. We are allowing judges to give as many top awards as they like; we don’t need an overall winner on the night as the scoring is cumula-tive over four rounds. This gets around the problem of some very fine work not getting recognised with an award.

We also have two evenings designated Master Photographer Competition when we have three differ-ent themes for each evening. Members bring a print for each theme on the night and spend the first half of the evening marking all the work out of 5 (giving 0 for their own). During the second half we present each print to the club, asking the photographer to say a few words about their image. I take the score sheets home and add them all up and the results are placed on the club web site. Having your work recognised by your club peers can be very satisfying.

Gordon Aspland Newton Abbot Photographic Club

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THE MONOCHROME IMAGE

Not so long ago, a monochrome photographer was a skilled artist! He or she had to pre-visualise the final monochrome rendition of an image - which then followed many hours in the darkroom, care-fully nurturing that pre-visualised image into realisation by some pretty clever wizardry involving bits of cardboard, fingers and other stuff waved about beneath the enlarger light - not to mention the right choice of paper, what sort of filtration to use and whether or not to tone, split tone or lithe print the image!

The advent of digital has seen some photographers today thinking their digital cameras are capable of capturing a colour image, which can then be either printed as a colour print - projected, slide-like - or desaturated - thus making a monochrome image by the simple expedient of pressing a button!

Ah! If only life were that simple?

Andy Beel, FRPS, is an acknowledged exponent of the digital art of monochromatic imagery. His moody and emotive images are frequently seen in International Salons, where they are no stranger to awards. Furthermore, his talks and demonstrations at Camera Clubs always draw good attendances.

His most recent talk at Dorchester Camera Club was preceded by a stroll along the Cob at Lyme Re-gis where this photograph was taken some five minutes before the official sunset time of 3.45pm.

Those wishing to improve their digital black and white photography will be interested to learn that Andy offers one-to-one home tuition where black and white prints are made from colour files, echo-ing the taste and smell of a darkroom fibre based print!

See examples of Andy’s work and details of his tuition at www.andybeelfrps.co.uk where further in-formation about Andy’s workshops may be obtained.

As Andy states - “black and white photography is essentially about tonal contrast. In the above photograph, if the woman had been wearing a black or dark toned coat, this picture would not have worked. Tonal contrast is what I seek to make pictures in a conventional manner.”

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Camera Club's Ladies Evening a great success

Dawlish and Teignmouth Camera Club's recent meeting was dedicated to the growing number of women members. Presentations were given by several of the female members of their own pictures and they all then got to judge prints submitted by men.

Keen birdwatcher, Eileen Marsh began by showing slides of a few of the birds she has captured on camera in places as diverse as Australia, The Galapagos and her own back garden.

Frances Renhard also used slides to show her pictures of local scenes and featured Teignmouth's traditional 'Boxing Day Dip', in 2000, when the event had to be held on the Back Beach due to the state of the sea. Fancy dress outfits included 7 people all dressed as the comedian, Max Wall.

Andrea Carter used the digital projector to show her nature shots, which included interesting close ups of wild flowers.

Denise Searle followed with projected images taken on her walking holidays in the UK, Majorca, The Dolomites, Madeira and The Pyrenees. Amongst spectacular scenery, some of the narrow ledges on the routes displayed were positively scary.

Shirley Boulton, Club Vice Chairperson, then described how she chooses a wide range of subjects to photograph, including still life, birds, landscapes and architecture. She also explained how much she enjoys learning how to improve digital images on the computer.

The last presentation from female members was from Joy Davies, who used several prints to show how her photography was progressing.

The evening was capped off with a bit of fun when prints taken by men were judged and voted on by the women members. In a brutal, 'knockout' style competition, in which two photos were displayed at a time but only one was selected to go through to the next round, 16 prints were quickly whittled down to two. Colin Crater's picture of an owl came second and Terry Boulton's woodland scene stole first prize.

Chairman, Byron Carnell, showed his appreciation to the presenters by giving each of them roses. He said, "Our membership reflects a wide range of interests and age groups. The club is thriving because members are actively participating in evenings like this and other events. Anyone with an interest in photography is welcome to come along for free to one of our regular Wednesday evening meetings, at Holcombe Village Hall."

Dave Hutton – DATC Press Secretary

Here come the girls . . . of Dawlish & Teignmouth Camera Club!

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NOTES FROM ZUMMERSET

I have been amazed at what Charles and Susanne achieved last year. Here is a list of some of their activities:

They went to the Royal Societies Christmas bash at Bath (where only small mince pies and a glass of sherry were on offer - necessitating a trip to McDonalds on the way homey!)

Anyway they were given the results of the 'peoples choice' from the Exhibition at Taunton Library, and they would like to thank everyone who supported them! Charles came second by one point (a bit like the Yeovil battle!) and Susanne came about 8th - not bad out of 112 prints on display. They got the impression that the Royal Society were pleased anyway, which is the main thing. Strangely it wasn't any awards or Gold Medals that Charles won that was mentioned at the Royal Photographic Society meeting - it was getting into the 'Biennial' that was the big thing! It seemed every top photographer in the country tries to get in to that. Charles’ photography is on display at The Royal Albert Hall! Weird - he never imagined that! Anyone thinking about entering next year should visit the RPS website for details of the competition.

Similarly, those thinking of having a go at a BPE competition will find more details about these competitions on the PAGB website - or better still, sign up for their newsletter which will be emailed direct to your email letterbox, and is always a mine of information about what’s going on in the world of camera club photography!

I get a great deal of satisfaction when people volunteer to help me, the club, or an organisation with a project and with the club increasing in reputation this is happening more and more, as when Trimwise Health & Fitness Centre contacted me to ask the members for their help to raise money for Charity - Somerset Breakthrough Brest Cancer.

The aim was to take enough images to produce a 2013 Calendar.

Members of the Health Club were enthusiastic, with 10 females and 7 male volunteers! Let me hand over to the photographer, who will now describe how the day went.

Brian Bateman on behalf of Sydenham Camera Club

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CALENDAR GIRLS - AND BOYS!!

 Sydenham camera club has a great tradition of helping out in the community, so when we had the unusual request of helping a local gym produce a “Calendar Girl” style shoot for a charity calendar we took it in our stride. One of our committee members, Andy White, went along to Trimwise and met up with Sunny, one of their instructors who was put in charge of producing the calendar. They had ten girls and seven boys volunteer plus two instructors.

We organised a date and a time when the gym was closed to do the shoot. The shoots were to be separate with the girls going first and the boys following. The girls were a bit nervous at first but being an experienced photographer. Andy soon them at their ease and they started to enjoy the experience. The boy’s shoot followed, and was wound up after three hours and a lot of fun.

A selection of edited images was given to Trimwise to complete the calendar. An initial run of 100 soon ran out and another 50 had to be ordered. The final sum raised was over £350. It was regarded as a great success and Trimwise is considering another calendar for next year.

Andy White : Sydenham Camera Club