This meeting was another “Members Night” and gave an opportunity for five of our members to highlight particular aspects of their photography. Keith Snell’s theme was ‘Serendipity’, how to make the best of the unexpected as well as how to create unexpected images. I particularly liked an image of a Hebridean sunset transformed by moving the camera horizontally during the exposure.
Carol Waterhouse showed her intriguing recycling of small sections of some of photographs into collages of colour and patterns.
Richard Jakobson talked us through his attempts at night photography and the techniques he has used, featuring the Aurora Borealis and stars, particularly the Milky Way.
These three demonstrations had been very well received at Morton Camera Club the week before.
New this week was Alan Walker’s fascinating exposition of the High Dynamic Range technique. HDR is used when there are areas of intense dark and brightness in a subject, easy for our eyes to adapt to, but containing too much contrast for even the most modern cameras to capture. The solution is to take the same frame at differing exposures and combine the results in special software, (Alan uses Photomatix but the newer versions of Lightroom also work well). HDR images can end up looking very artificial but in Alan’s hands the subtle results are quite natural although he also likes adding a ‘grungy’ look to subjects such as abandoned old cars.
Finally, Carol Minks, one of our excellent wildlife photographers, showed us few of her favourite nature images. Some of these had been taken on slide film, some were local to Cumbria with others in Central Europe, Scandinavia and, perhaps her favourite place to visit, Yellowstone National Park and ranged from Orchids through Butterflies to Brown Bears. All were cracking shots.
Tony Marsh