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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

The usual Wednesday weekly meeting of Keswick Photographic Society was transferred to Thursday following an invitation from Morton Camera Club for members to attend and present their images.  A group of volunteers from Keswick set out to Morton Community Centre in Carlisle where they were welcomed by Chairman Gerald Chamberlain.

The evening was started by Keswick’s Chairman, Keith Snell with an image of a nude model holding a discreetly placed chiffon. It had been taken at a Royal Photographic Society course when the model was relaxed and not consciously posing. Keith had used a small Canon G15 camera without flash producing an image which fulfilled all the rules of fibonacci sequence.  He then showed a lone Red Fox in Yellowstone in scenic snowscape, a reminder that these are lone animals who can survive in wilderness and travel huge distances. Next was an example of Intentional Camera Movement (ICM) which was achieved by panning from left to right with the appropriate camera settings. He ended with an example of In Camera Multiple Exposure (ICME) where three images of heather, reeds and water were superimposed on each other giving a surreal appearance.

Richard Jakobson then gave a talk on “A Novices Guide to the Milky Way” showing beautiful images of the night sky and the Milky Way. His tips were to be awake at 3am(!), use a tripod and to focus on infinity. Amazingly the camera sees a totally different image from that of the eye.  Richard had added foreground interest by either using longer exposures, a torch or a little help from the quarter moon. However he encountered two problems; condensation on the lens and falling asleep.  Despite the title of ‘novice’ these images were very good.

Ken Rennie then showed some stunning landscape images of Dornoch Point in Scotland, Castle Crag in Borrowdale and the steamer on Ullswater taken from Gowbarrow.  His talk included the various techniques he uses in lightroom and photoshop to obtain impressive improvements which were often counter intuitive. In addition he changed from using a wide angled lens to a telephoto lens to emphasise the more interesting aspects of the landscape, hence the adage “less is more”.

Following the interval Carmen Norman showed some studio shots of a ballerina (Kirstie) in a variety of poses displaying her versatility including an amazing standing splits. The use of a step ladder gave some additional interesting postures and lighting challenges.  Outdoors, Kirstie did some ballet leaps and spins adjacent to Crummock Water, waterfalls and Cathedral Cavern where a point pose reflecting in the water was beautiful.

Carole Waterhouse showed a number of images that at first sight appeared ordinary but after some radical cropping to focus on an intriguing part of the image then copied up to 6 times, she produced some exceptional work, “Hands of Buddha” being a good example.  Images of bubbles and reflections were manipulated into creative and visually impressive compositions.

Ronnie Gilbert ended the evening with some of his natural history shots. He explained that  for certain animals it was essential to be in a hide because of the sensitivity or the ferocity of the subject including kingfishers, sparrowhawks and a European Brown Bear whereas less sensitive and more curious fauna are hares, squirrels, and the deer in Bradgate Park.  The RSPB sites at Leighton Moss, Martin Mere, Bempton Cliffs and the Farne Islands all provide ideal sites to photograph various species of water loving birds. One of Ronnie’s beautiful images was of two humming birds on the decking of an apartment in California, taken with camera in one hand and a G&T in the other.  His finale was an image of an adolescent grizzly bear running towards him, he chose to stand still and fortunately the bear passed by about 5 feet away. Phew!

The feedback from Morton members was very complimentary and Keswick Photographic Society look forward to the 2018-2019 season when Morton Camera Club will visit Keswick to reciprocate the session.