For the first meeting of the new year Keswick photographic Society (KPS) members were entertained by four members of Dumfries Camera Club. This is a reciprocal arrangement; four members of KPS having presented talks to Dumfries a few weeks earlier. It was a tremendously successful evening with members treated to some first class images and explanations of techniques.
The evening began with Margaret Elliott explaining how a Covid 19 lockdown project resulted in the production of a panel of fine art macro images of flowers which gained her the qualification, Associate of The Royal Photographic Society. She explained the processes involved, occasionally freezing the flower heads in water and the practice of photo-stacking.
This involved her photographing very tiny parts of a flower and continually adjusting the point of focus before taking more, thereby ensuring that the resulting image is pin-sharp throughout the depth of the image. Margaret superimposed layers of texture on some of the images to great effect.
David Moyes explained his journey through architectural photography from absolute novice through to expert with success at the highest level. Last year David won a Gold Medal at the prestigious Edinburgh Exhibition and had a number accepted in international salons. David explained that the principal lesson in his success involved the understanding of the impact of light and shadow.
Showing his original images, followed by the monochrome processed images, David revealed just how dramatically different the results could be, even when beginning with apparently simple colour photographs. He also demonstrated how the treatment worked so much better with new materials and shapes in modern architecture.
Maybeth Jamieson began her presentation with images from her photography passion; sport and particularly, tennis. Her images captured the raw emotion and the extreme exertion of professional tennis players. Maybeth demonstrated the techniques which best delivered the drama of the game emphasising in the shape of the players, the light and shadows and the opportunities to include or exclude the contextual environment elements.
In addition to tennis Maybeth enjoys equestrian sports from point to point to three day eventing and visits many locations around the Borders capturing the action very successfully. The talk was rounded off with a variety of other sporting images including cricket, athletics and motorbike scrambling.
Jean Robson completed the line-up and showed some remarkable images from her two recent trips to Svalbard. Entitled Arctic Moods, Jean’s talk began with an explanation of her expectations; to photograph arctic wildlife. Her successes, however, were initially with wonderful landscapes.
Arriving in late April the sea ice was melting and the pancake ice seascapes were enhanced by the incredible patterns created by the ice and the directional lighting. Occasionally wildlife would enter these landscape shots and produce even more wondrous images. Two such images included a fox and a walrus making unannounced appearances! Jean explained the lack of interest shown by the wildlife in general to the zodiacs in which they approached some. This enabled some wonderful close-up photographs of Walrus, Seals, Reindeer and, on her later autumn trip, Polar Bears waiting for the arrival of the winter ice.
The later trip also provided beautiful lighting conditions on mountain sides swept clear of snow. Jean captured many stunning images of wildlife and landscape.
It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening for which all four speakers were thanked and applauded.
David Woodthorpe
